Three decades ago, Pauline Hanson’s brand of politics was so shocking, aberrant and dangerous that it made the front page of The Washington Post.
The year was 1998 and the Post was still an American newspaper of record. Hanson’s photo was worth printing on the front page, because something momentous had happened: after being discounted by most of the Australian media, One Nation had reached its highest ever polling at the time. The paper described her and her party as “ultranationalist”.
The term sticks out because today, no major media organisation uses labels like “ultranationalist” or even “far-right” to describe One Nation’s politics.
