When Marine Le Pen stepped in to replace her Holocaust-denying father as leader of the French National Front in 2011, it was part of a strategy to cleanse the far-right party of associations with Nazism. Le Pen judged that distancing herself from overt racism was the only practical route to electability. The French dubbed this manoeuvre dédiabolisation (“de-demonisation”).
Fifteen years later, Australia’s homegrown far right is moving in exactly the opposite direction. Pauline Hanson—a creature who initially slithered out of the Australian conservative tradition as a Liberal candidate in 1996—now openly calls for cultural homogenisation and actively seeks out the company of prominent neo-Nazis.
Hanson is making no attempt to sanitise her politics for the sake of broad appeal. On the contrary, she is hardening her political positions, becoming more unapologetically fascistic, and encouraging her supporters to follow.
If anything, the more “official” endorsement Hanson receives—by way of National Press Club invitations, corporate donations and ex-Liberal backing—the more brazenly she pushes her extremist agenda. Political commentators are baffled by her apparent inability to judge what might hurt or help her “broad appeal”, but they misunderstand.
She couldn’t care less if One Nation’s positions are unpopular (otherwise she would not promote abortion bans, campaign for fossil fuels and oppose parental leave payments). Hanson is advancing a conscious political argument, aimed at disaffected coalition voters: that Australian conservatism needs to become more confident and more extreme. She deliberately flouts every cordon sanitaire that is supposed to separate “acceptable” mainstream conservatism from its mutant far-right offspring. Her aim is to create a hard, right-wing base that can be mobilised when necessary and used to push mainstream political discourse further to the right.
It was only last month that off-the-rails Nine News presenter Karl Stefanovic was sacked for podcasting with UK fascist street agitator Tommy Robinson—a signal from the Australian media establishment about what they currently consider outside of acceptable discourse.
But just weeks later, Hanson is revelling in the opportunity to associate with Robinson, joining him for an hour-long podcast interview and walking tour through London’s multiracial neighbourhoods as well as his home town of Luton. “I don’t feel like I’m in England”, Hanson told Robinson in a video shared on his TikTok channel. “I definitely don’t want Australia to become like this.”
Hanson used the podcast as a platform to expand on the theme of “monoculture” introduced in her National Press Club address in June. She explained to Robinson that new arrivals entering Australia today are “different” from European migrants who settled after the Second World War. Those people “really assimilated” and “learned to speak English”, she said.
Robinson chimed in that he’d seen “some crazy videos” highlighting levels of Pakistani and Somali (i.e. non-white) migration to Australia. “How have you ended up with ... all of these African problems, with violent Africans?”
Hanson answered that it all “started” when the White Australia policy ended in 1973—“then they started bringing in the different migrants”. She then launched into a racialised anti-welfare tirade accusing Muslims in particular of moving to Australia “purely for the welfare system”.
The obvious implication is that, for Hanson, white immigrants are okay (as long as they speak only English), and everyone else is not welcome. This is the “monoculture” to which she wants to subject us; this is the hellish “one nation” she seeks to build.
Such open white supremacist politics is, for now, still rejected by majority establishment opinion—even Nigel Farage (Reform UK leader) refuses to engage with white nationalists like Robinson, preferring to target foreign “culture” rather than biological race and ethnicity. And Liberal Party leader Angus Taylor likewise criticised Hanson for appearing with Robinson.
But Hanson is far from being out on a limb. Rather she joins a growing camp of explicit ethno-nationalists who are cohering on the international right. In Britain, MP Rupert Lowe has split away from Reform to set up Restore Britain—a rival electoral outfit that YouGov estimates is winning over at least 10 percent of Farage’s voter base. According to anti-fascist research centre Hope Not Hate, Restore welcomes street-fighting thugs and organised neo-Nazis from groups like Remigration Now, Patriotic Alternative and White Vanguard.
These organisations have been central to mobilising the pogromist violence that’s erupted in the UK every summer for the past three years. Each wave of racist rioting has culminated in record-breaking mass street marches led by Robinson.
It’s with this supremacist wing of the international far right that Hanson has chosen to align herself. Not because she is a “fool” (as hypocritical Herald Sun bigot Andrew Bolt has alleged), but because she actively identifies with this politics.
Hanson told a Channel Seven Spotlight special she's “very much on the same page” as Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe. Asked about his policy of forced removal of up to 2 million people, Hanson replied, “I love it”, and stated she would implement mass deportation plans if One Nation wins government.
So far it seems Hanson has judged her razzed-up base correctly: Monday’s Newspoll has One Nation recovering polling numbers to reach 30 percent after her defiant weekend performance in the UK. And whatever peaks and troughs may come through in the polling, Hanson and her base are now clearly established as a force in Australia’s political landscape.
Like so much of today’s far right, Hanson is a demon conjured up by capitalism’s mainstream. She’s been able to entrench herself only through a longstanding association with the traditional right, favourable media coverage and the backing of some major capitalists like Rupert Murdoch and Gina Rinehart.
But none of this support has required Hanson to tame the more extreme aspects of her program or tone down her racism. In fact, it’s only spurred her on to wilder extremes. Our response must be equally determined, unequivocal and unapologetic. Our response must be to build socialist organisation in opposition to Hanson and the system that spawned her.
The Greens, the Labor Party and their associated NGOs will not lead a defiant resistance to Hansonism. They’ve already shown they’re afraid to confront her racism, turning focus instead to cost-of-living measures that will supposedly curb One Nation’s growth. But Albanese’s Labor have administered a regime of below-inflation wage rises alongside massive subsidies to big business. Labor has overseen racial injustice from the island of Nauru to the Pacific visa scheme to Don Dale youth detention centre. Labor might not openly say it, but they adopt and implement policies that depend on racism and enrich the already wealthy at the expense of workers, just like Hanson wants to.
Labor’s key parliamentary collaborators, the Greens, seek to maintain the same social order—one in which hierarchy, economic domination and structural inequality are simply made to appear less brutal, not eradicated. But capitalism is a social system that needs to be abolished, not sugar-coated.
The answer to Hanson’s dog-eat-dog vision of society dominated by money making with no constraints is one of genuine human dignity and solidarity, a society organised to meet the needs of those who work to sustain it rather than a privileged and powerful minority. In other words, socialism.
Individuals, however well intentioned, cannot hope to turn the tide against Hanson and her bourgeois backers. Without political organisation and institutional weight, we can only complain from the sidelines. If Hanson’s rise has proven anything, it is that the impact of a political intervention by a determined and unapologetic minority can make a difference.
Socialist Alternative and the Socialist Party want to meet this challenge head on. Every oppositional impulse against Hanson must be drawn into an organised fight in our unions, on our university campuses, on the streets and in elections. Every instinct of defiance must be channelled into an organised resistance movement, animated by an uncompromising hostility to capitalism and a socialist vision of a better world. This means immersing ourselves in the history and theory of the Marxist tradition. It means urgently engaging in practical activity to grow the ranks of convinced and mobilised socialists. In a time of capitalist demons, it means making the only decent choice: become an active socialist.
