How mainstream media and politicians fuelled Australia's biggest far-right rally

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On Sunday, Australia witnessed the largest public mobilisation of anti-immigration and white supremacist sentiment in its history, culminating in a neo-Nazi delivering a speech from the steps of Victorian parliament and thousands of Sydneysiders cheering on the ideology that motivated the Christchurch shooter.

In the 1930’s, when the first wave of fascism was at its peak in Australia, far-right groups like the New Guard struggled to mobilise more than 1,000 people for public actions. This weekend 15,000 people joined the so-called “March for Australia” in Sydney alone. I witnessed upwards of 10,000 flag-clad, anti-immigration slogan-spouting marching in Melbourne.

In the weeks before the march, and even the day after these disturbing scenes, political and media figures described the rally as simply voicing “legitimate concerns” over issues like the "price of housing” and attacked those who suggested the truth: that this was a national day of action for the white nationalist far-right.

Self-identified white supremacists and neo-Nazis were given top speaking slots by organisers in most major cities, crowds cheered when told they were marching to defend “Anglo-European” primacy over Australia, and organisers explicitly discussed how they would use coded language like protecting “Australian heritage” to draw attendees towards their true aim: “white heritage”. This was not a protest hijacked by the far-right, it was far-right from inception to execution.

Why we need to take the March for Australia seriously

The marches dwarfed the organised counter-protests, yet there is a sense from some that a national total of 30-40,000 participating in explicitly far-right marches, organised, co-ordinated and addressed by neo-Nazis is somehow underwhelming and represents a failure.

I recognise the desire for optimism and can understand an unwillingness to embrace the reality that Nazism and white supremacy have become normalised, but it’s incredibly important that everyone interested in the social fabric of this country, and its political trajectory, understands the significance of what occurred. The fact the far-right was able to organise this number of people despite enormous amounts of chaos, confusion, internal dissent and mixed messages should be an urgent wake-up call.

This kind of mobilisation didn’t emerge out of nowhere. It is the result of the unreckoned with  white supremacist foundation that Australia was constructed upon, recently turbocharged with by a media and political ecosystem that has boosted racist rhetoric, profiled and boosted key racist figures and completely normalised the denigration of migrants, First Nations communities and everyone who is non-white.

For the past few years, as Australia grappled with serious economic and social problems, amplified by record-high inflation, a growing housing crisis, the destruction of higher education, and the growing inaccessibility of public healthcare, governments and media outlets have been fixated on demonising and criminalising the pro-Palestine movement, including passing new laws to crack down on protest and speech and waging McCarthyist campaigns to destroy the lives of artists, academics and journalists for opposing slaughter and genocide.

Now as the far-right take to the streets and celebrate terrorism, spread racism and anti-semitism, inflame hatred, division and violence – all things the media and politicians have accused pro-Palestine protestors of doing – they seem caught off-guard. Some politicians have condemned neo-Nazi elements, others have endorsed the Marches and even participated, while Australia’s biggest media companies continue to platform Nazis and spread racist, anti-immigration rhetoric.

All of this suggests that rather than being a culmination, Sunday’s protests are actually the beginning of a new, emboldened phase of far-right activity in Australia.

The background to the rallies

Over the last few years the Australian far-right have watched the resurgence of fascism, white supremacy and explicit anti-immigration attitudes across Europe and the US and tried to replicate it in Australia. 

Despite what some progressives have convinced themselves of, their past inability to do so is not the result of some kind of innate egalitarian spirit within Australians. It’s largely down to two things: their own internal disagreements and inability to cohere, as well as the fact that Australia already has the strongest anti-immigration policies in the west.

Donald Trump’s immigration policy, particularly his reliance on detention centres and deportations, is explicitly modelled on Australia’s approach. In the UK, Nigel Farage’s Reform Party, who are leading the polls, are promising an “Australia-style” response to immigration.

The fact that Australia’s major parties have embraced the fascist ideal of what immigration policy should look like for 30 years has hamstrung the growth of actual far-right groups.

That started changing in recent years. Part of that is the fact that the rise of far-right governments in Europe and the US have normalised openly white supremacist beliefs and ideas. That’s also been boosted by social media platforms, and mainstream media outlets, who now regularly broadcast racist hate aimed at denigrating non-white people. As it’s become more socially acceptable to spout white supremacist beliefs in public, those who do so are looking for political homes where their beliefs are matched.

The impact of pandemic lockdowns and the radicalisation of significant swathes of working and middle class white Australians who feel like they were over-policed and subjected to authoritarian rule has also helped fuel the growth of the far-right.

Perhaps most significantly, the economic pressures in Australia have helped create the bedrock of discontent necessary for any kind of extremist project to become more mainstream. It is very hard for neo-Nazi’s to mobilise tens of thousands of Australians without genuine anxiety around the cost of living and general economic wellbeing, as has been the case throughout history.

What actually occurred at the rallies

These overlapping motivations for participating in the March for Australia rallies were quite obvious. I participated in Melbourne’s counter-protest, but as that was blocked by police on Swanston St, I moved to observe the bulk of the far-right protestors as they marched from Flinders Street Station up Elizabeth St towards the State Library and Parliament. 

The first thing that stood out to me was the number of attendees. For nearly 30 minutes, Australian-flag clad protestors streamed up the road. It was already quite clear this protest was significantly larger than the counter-demonstration.

The Age newspaper estimated 6,000 participants, but based on my own experiences at marches, and comparing this crowd to past pro-Palestine rallies that have attracted anywhere between 3-30,000 people, I think the crowd was at least 10,000 strong. It was overwhelmingly white and skewed older and male.

The next observation I made was how incoherent the rally was. There was no clear structure, co-ordination, agenda, strategy or directions. The participants were also motivated by various grievances. The anti-immigration strain was quite clearly the most prominent, but there were sizable blocs agitated by Victorian state government policies, tax, and over-policing.

To encapsulate the confused nature of the participants, at one point I witnessed a group of protestors erupt into a rendition of “I Am Australian”, a song generally considered to be pro-First Nations and supportive of multiculturalism.

Some have pointed to these contradictions and suggested that the rally was a bust because the messaging was confused and uncoordinated. I think it’s important to understand that this is the case at most large rallies, including those organised by the left. The fact the first such rally of this scale, organised by the far-right, did not have message discipline is not really a surprise.

What’s more important, and became quite clear to me, is that whatever organisation and discipline there was, was being provided by the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network, led by Thomas Sewell. 

The heavy police presence in the CBD was overwhelmingly focused on blocking and disrupting the counter-protest. This effectively let the March for Australia take over the CBD and pour into whatever streets, lanes and public places they saw fit. It resulted in Sewell addressing the rally from the steps of Victorian Parliament, delivering white supremacist slogans to a crowd of thousands that cheered back in support and encouragement.

The same pattern played out across the country. Despite attempts to portray the march as somehow de-linked from organised far-right activists, it was quite obvious who was running the show.

In Sydney, protest organiser Jesse Stewart spoke about the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory – the key ideological underpinning of the Christchurch shooter who murdered 51 Muslims.

The leaders of neo-Nazi groups were handed the microphone to rail against “Indians, Africans, and Chinese” migrants who were “exploiting” Australian land. They received loud cheers.

In Brisbane, when some participants expressed dismay that Nazis were being platformed, the crowd dismissed them.

None of this should really be a surprise – the March organisers have been explicit that their goal was to use vague, less-confrontational rhetoric in order to build momentum and grow numbers.This has been a long-standing far-right strategy. They know that they lack numbers and political influence because of the historic disdain for explicit Nazi labels and rhetoric. Instead, they have used stunts to grow their profile and developed euphemistic language around “patriotism” and “concerns around housing” to reach a larger number of people. When those people arrive at a rally like this, they are then pushed further to the right by being exposed to speakers like Sewell and Stewart. It’s a well-worn path of radicalisation, and exactly why a mass rally like this should be a huge cause for concern.

The political and media reaction

By and large, the ABC and The Age did particularly good jobs of covering the rallies in Sydney and Melbourne, particularly the ABC’s Nabil Al-Nashar and The Age’s Michael Bachelard.

But what has been noticeable is how little outcry there has been from the same outlets who have accused the pro-Palestine movement of spreading hate and fomenting violence and anti-semitism. In July, The Age published an editorial condemning pro-Palestine protesters. This Monday, the day after the March for Australia rallies, the editorial was a re-published piece from the archives about the Puffing Billy train. Thanks to sustained media demonisation of the pro-Palestine movement, governments across the country have passed laws to further impinge the right to protest. Protestors have been arrested for holding up particular signs.

At the Adelaide march, one protestor held a sign up supporting Dezi Freeman, a wanted fugitive accused of murdering two police officers, who subscribes to extremist ideology. If a pro-Palestine member held up a Hezbollah flag, let alone an image of a militant who had killed two people, they would be arrested on the spot.

Federal MP Bob Katter, who spoke at the Townsville march, said “resistance” to the law had become the “duty” of Australians. If Senator Fatima Payman made the same speech she would be hounded out of parliament, and likely out of the country.

I’m not convinced that further criminalisation of the right to protest and freedom of speech is what will help defeat the far-right (largely because it will predominately be used to further target the left, and pro-Palestine protestors), but the hypocrisy on display from media and politicians is remarkable.

Broadly speaking, the mainstream political reaction to the rallies stretches from wholesale condemnation, to “understanding the grievances” for protestors but criticising the neo-Nazi element, all the way through to explicit endorsement. 

Three One Nation senators, including Pauline Hanson, attended the Canberra March. They have not faced, and are unlikely to face, any kind of censure motion from the Senate.

On Monday, former Liberal Senator Hollie Hughes defended the protests saying, "the majority of people there are not neo-Nazi’s, are not racist.” Current Liberal senator Jacinta Price congratulated those who attended.

In the Senate, the Coalition sought to amend a Greens motion condemning the rallies to instead specifically condemn neo-Nazi elements and equate them to the pro-Palestine movement.

The federal Labor government has condemned the rallies, though MP Anne Aly said it was a “fair assessment” that most of the attendees were not neo-Nazis and instead held “legitimate” concerns about housing and infrastructure. She went on to say: “Some of the messaging out of the protests targeted, for example, anti-Indian immigration. Now that, to me, is clearly racist. When you target a specific ethnicity, that is clearly racism.”

Meanwhile, the News Corp media have effectively embraced the March, promoted its key spokespeople and condemned those who opposed it. Columnist for The Australian, Nick Cater, wrote on Monday: “We must confront the diversity fetish and recognise that some cultures are more conducive to flourishing than others.”

Sky News anchors and Daily Telegraph journalists also threw support behind people attending the rallies, with Sky airing an interview with Thomas Sewell on the day of the rally, providing him with another platform to promote his neo-Nazi rhetoric.

What happens next?

Right now, most well-meaning progressives are oscillating between denial and despair. The denial is driven by a reluctance to acknowledge that far from being immune to the wave of fascism that has crashed through Europe and the US, Australia is now at the centre of it. The despair is because the weekend demonstrated how much far-right sentiment there is in the country, and how it can be mobilised to take over our cities.I can relate to both of these feelings, but I think there are also some pretty straightforward takeaways.

The first relates to the media. For more than a decade I’ve been arguing that the Australian media’s intrinsic racism, overwhelming whiteness, and obsession with disciplining and demonising anyone who critiques those things has helped normalise white supremacist rhetoric and bolster the far-right. I have argued, from the inside and from the outside, against the uncritical platforming of neo-Nazis and white supremacists. I have criticised the tabloids and shock jocks that spread misleading claims about immigration numbers and the columnists who smuggled “Great Replacement” ideology into the pages of newspapers.

But over the past 10 years, none of that has gotten better – in fact, it’s gotten much worse. News Corp is now an openly white supremacist organisation. The once progressive Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers have been almost single-mindedly focused on boosting Israel and attacking pro-Palestine protestors for two years. On Friday, The Guardian, a publication that constantly brags about being on the front-line against fascism, glowingly wrote about and promoted an independent Australian podcaster because he made a racist joke.

All of these institutions are responsible, albeit to different extents, for the pools of hate that are spreading across Australia. Until their owners and editors acknowledge that, their readers should hold them to account and support the growing independent media landscape.

The other clear takeaway is the political solution. Governments on both sides have fanned the flames of racist, anti-immigration sentiment for decades. Just this week, the federal government announced a $400m deal to forcibly send a migrant cohort to Nauru, in a response to a High Court ruling that indefinite detention is illegal, plunging Australia's punitive, inhumane and illegal migration policies to new lows.They have also already bowed to the demands of those campaigning against immigration by drastically reducing international student numbers, another Trumpian policy move.

It’s impossible to fight against white supremacists and the far-right by effectively doing their bidding.

Instead, the government should focus on ensuring that the serious economic problems that are driving the resentment fuelling the far-right are tackled. Until Australians can afford safe, secure housing, until it becomes actually free to go to the doctor, dentist or psychologist, until young people can get a degree without being saddled with a decade worth of debt, until big corporations are reigned in from their profit-gouging, there will be justifiable anger throughout the community.  The far-right breeds on that anger, they always have. 

Ordinary Australians who are appalled by what they saw on the weekend need to understand that it won’t magically go away unless they demand better from their media and their politicians. It might seem overwhelming, but doing nothing won’t change anything. And in the meantime, it’s time to hit the streets. Because I can tell you that if there were more of us there on Sunday, outnumbering the far-right, the result would have been very different.