Far-right politics in Australia describes authoritarian ideologies, including fascism and white supremacy as they manifest in Australia.
In Australia the far-right first came to public attention with the formation in 1931 of the New Guard in Sydney and its offshoot, the Centre Party in 1933. These proto-fascist groups were monarchist, anti-communist and authoritarian in outlook. These early far-right groups were followed by the explicitly fascist Australia First Movement (1941). Far-right groups and individuals in Australia went on to adopt more explicitly racial positions during the 1960s and 1970s, morphing into self-proclaimed Nazi, fascist and antisemitic movements, organisations that opposed non-white and non-Christian immigration, such as the neo-Nazi National Socialist Party of Australia (1967) and the militant white supremacist group National Action (1982).
Since 2001, Australia has seen the formation of several neo-Nazi, neo-Fascist or alt-right groups such as the True Blue Crew, the United Patriots Front, Lads Society, Fraser Anning's Conservative National Party and the Antipodean Resistance, and others.
Australian nationalism was a 19th-century movement, mostly concerned with establishing an Australian national identity, but more recently, some far-right groups have also dubbed themselves Australian nationalists.
Overview According to James Saleam, a political scientist, academic, and long time advocate of far-right ideas, the Australian far-right could be divided into four groups: Radical-Nationalism; Neo-Nazism; Populist-Monarchism; Radical-Populism. The first group is characterised by its doctrinal reference to the Australian labour, republican, and nationalist heritage, and their rejection towards the imperial, American-alliance or client-internationalist phases of their country. The second group conglomerates movements directly influenced by international neo-Nazism, including white supremacists and the skinhead movement. The third group is composed of movements which advocate for a populist interpretation of the Australian Constitution and support for a depersonalised monarchy as an embodiment of popular will. The fourth group is supportive of popular democracy, gun ownership and grassroots activism under a populist underpinning.
Although recognising that it is not an homogeneous movement, Dean et al. (2016) identified six fundamental cores among the Australian radical right: opposition towards immigration, anti-establishment and anti-elitist rhetoric, the protection of western values and culture, a radical regeneration of the democratic system within the democratic system, a return to traditional values in opposition to multiculturalism, and a support to a strong state committed to law and order.
Australia's transition away from the bipartisan immigration framework associated with the White Australia policy began with the passage of the Migration Act 1958, which abolished the dictation test formerly used to restrict non-European immigration. In 1973, the government of Gough Whitlam introduced policies stating that race would no longer be considered a criterion for immigration to Australia. Arthur Calwell of the Labour Party and leader of the Opposition from 1960 to 1967, was the last major political leader to staunchly defend the White Australia policy. Opposition to multiculturalism later became associated with segments of the Australian far-right, including Pauline Hanson, whose 1996 maiden speech argued that excessive multiculturalism threatened national cohesion.
Neo-Nazi groups such as the National Socialist Network have become more prominent in the 2020s.
History 1901–1945 Far-right groups in Australia first appeared after the country's federation in 1901, though the most significant groups appeared after the end of World War I, following the post-war economic depression, rising communist agitation and the election of a radical Labor government in New South Wales, led by Jack Lang. The 1920s saw a rise of paramilitary far-right formations, including the Old Guard, the League of National Security (also known as the White Army), the Citizens' Defence Brigade, the X Force, the Emergency Committee of South Australia, and the Constitutional Association; most of those were supportive of an Anglo-Australian conservatism and British loyalism rather than espousing a palingenetic and nationalist ideology characteristic of contemporary fascist movements in the era The Old Guard gathered a total of 30,000 members and a support base mainly composed of Australia's business elites and conservative politicians. The Guard maintained a clandestine watch on public affairs, stockpiling weapons to intervene after an hypothetical collapse of the government. The failure of Lang's labourist government to prevent economic distress, deemed as a ‘socialistic’ regime by the Old Guard, lead to the group to represent a strong opposition against its policies.
The Depression years and the political crisis intensified the mobilization of conservative paramilitarism in response to the dual challenges represented by both the far-left and Lang's Labor populism, leading to the formation of more radicalized far-right groups during the early 1930s, including the formation of the Citizens' League of South Australia, the New Guard and fractious members of the All for Australia League (AFAL) and League of National Security. Both the AFAL and the New Guard were launched in February 1931, the later by Colonel Eric Campbell and other military officers as a splinter group of the conservative Old Guard in reaction to its 'passive' position. The New Guard derived from a conservative and pro-capitalist ideological tradition, supporting a pro-British imperial patriotism while holding anti-socialist and individualist stances, and argued for a ‘government run by experts’ as the ideal model for Australia. The AFAL, in contrast, held more a most moderate position, with its conservative ideology rooted in British liberalism. However, the labour movement still perceived a ‘fascist menace’ in it. The New Guard held a strong position against both Bolshevism and trade unionism, forming links with employers’ associations as a way to persuade anti-communist workers to counter-rest trade unions; the New Guard maintained a more public approach and a working-class based support in contrast with its predecessor. Lang's dismissal in 1932 lead to the New Guard to a gradual fade, as its existence as a reaction force against Lang's regime had become redundant.
Local support for Fascism also emerged during the 1930s in the Australian-Italian community, through the formation of Fascio social organizations in support of Benito Mussolini, with presence in Victoria, New South Wales, and Western Australia. National Socialism, in a similar way, also got local support through the establishment of local strongholds in support of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), with the formation of a local stronghold in Adelaide in 1932 and consequent expansion to other capitals the following years, and the formal establishment of the NSDAP in Australian territory in 1934. After Campbell's tour to Germany and Italy in 1933, and meeting with British fascist Sir Oswald Mosley in Europe, the New Guard incorporated fascist rituals, including uniforms and the Roman salute, leading to the departure of some of its membership. In 1933, he founded the Centre Party, structured on the fascist parties in Europe and with support of Mosley to form an imperial network of fascist groups. However, by the mid-1930s, the party had disbanded. Alexander Rud Mills, a local Melbourne lawyer, took a more spiritual approach towards the far-right by the foundation of an Odinist cult, supporting a racial interpretation of Odinism as a way to restore the Australian nation. Mills wrote several books aimed at the restoration of the British tradition in Australia, and maintained contact with international fascist and national socialist circles, meeting Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.
Nativist expressions of Australian nationalism, distanced from the pro-British tendencies prominent in the Australian far-right, emerged during the decade around the figure of the poet and writer Percy R. Stephensen and his journal The Publicist. Stephensen, a former communist and literary provocateur, drew together heterogeneous intellectual strands—anti-imperialism, anti-democracy, antisemitism, cultural and racial nationalism, and an anti-British nativism—into a localized fascist movement. Stephensen collaborated with the Jindyworobak poets, championed Aboriginal cultural motifs as the spiritual foundation of the new Australian identity, and co-founded an Aborigines' Progressive Association. Two years after Australia's entry in World War II, and with help of The Publicist collaborator William J. Miles and former communist Adela Pankhurst, P. R. Stephenson founded the Australia First Movement (AFM) in October 1941, receiving support from Mills and other nationalist intellectuals such as the poet Ian Mudie. The AFM was aligned with the Axis powers ideology, and sought a political alliance with Japan to secure Australian autonomy from the British Empire. As a result, followers of the movement were classified as a 'security threat' by the state and were arrested by authorities. The AFM saw its termination after the internment of Stephensen and other members in March 1942, where Stephensen's admiration for Hitler and Nazism as a 'regenerationist force' contributed to his condemnation. By the end of the war, fascist groups in Australia were already banned and several key figures within the fascist movement were persecuted and interned.
1946–1990s Following the end of World War II, the far-right was widely perceived as a spent political force in Australia. Certain far-right groups, such as the Australian Nationalist Movement and the White Australia League, were established with links to former AFM members. Displaced European individuals who resettled on Australian territory after the war also formed ethnic nationalist groups, leading to the establishment of right-wing and veterans' organizations in Australia, with some of those creating links with local branches of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations and the Captive Nations Council. Distancing itself from nationalism, the Right's view regarding isolationism changed drastically as the global landscape evolved towards an external contest between the USA and the USSR, or as an struggle between capital and the far-left. By 1949, Australia's geopolitical position was determined under Robert Menzies’s presidency, whose regime acted as a conservative reaction against international communism. Social credit ideology survived after 1945 after being inherited by Eric Butler and his Australian League of Rights (ALR), founded in 1946. Following the antisemitism typical of pre-war far-right groups, the ALR considered jews as the force of centralization and inequity in Australia, and its ideology was based on a pro-British loyalist platform, although they also adopted an anti-communist position as a core tenet. The ALR exerted pressure on mainstream right-wing parties such as the Liberal and National parties, whom they tried to infiltrate and replace their core values in a strategy of entryism.