For twenty years after Pauline Hanson was first elected to the federal seat of Oxley in 1996, the major parties tried to keep her out of Australia’s parliaments. They were broadly successful: the One Nation leader was jailed in 2003 for electoral fraud and failed in all eight state and federal elections she contested between 1998 and 2015.
Yet mainstream politicians courted Hanson’s far-right voting base throughout. The Coalition, often with ALP support, implemented many of her policies. In this, they were aided by the atmosphere of the so-called war on terror from 2001, which unleashed a wave of Islamophobia across the Western world. Whether it was refugees and “border protection”, civil liberties, law and order, or government authoritarianism more generally, the first decade of the 21st century was characterised by a series of attacks on workers and the poor, and a strengthening of the position of capitalists and the repressive arms of the state.
Then, in 2016, Hanson was again successful, being sworn in as a senator to the federal parliament. But this time, from the outset, the old establishment hostilities seemed to melt away. Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull met with her in his office straight away. On 60 Minutes, Liz Hayes presented a total puff piece, following months of paid appearances on the Seven network’s Sunrise, the country’s top-rated breakfast TV show. In Red Flag, we wrote about the normalisation of Hansonism.
At the time, the left was campaigning against the rise of a significant anti-Islam street movement called Reclaim Australia, and the emergence of neo-Nazi groups at the core of it. As well, Donald Trump’s successes in the US were sending shockwaves around the world and inspiring renewed far-right electoral advances in many countries.
Since then, the political situation has deteriorated further. Today, in all the major Western powers—the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Italy—fascist or fascist-adjacent organisations are either in government or have become the main opposition. And as far-right groups and individuals have become increasingly successful, the capitalist establishment and sections of the corporate media have increasingly embraced, sanitised and promoted them. If we thought the far right was being normalised a decade ago, it is just part of the furniture today.
In Australia, in less than a year, Hanson has flipped the script on what was thought possible. One Nation has gone from polling 5 percent to overtaking the combined vote of the Liberals and Nationals—and not just in one outlier opinion poll, but in at least half a dozen. Shockingly, a Guardian Essential poll this week found that nearly 60 percent of Australians say that they are open to voting for One Nation in the next federal election.
Hanson, coming on the heels of the international far-right’s successes, and backed by multi-billionaire Gina Rinehart and a growing coterie of the ultra-wealthy, is being promoted like never before. It’s clear why: there is rising discontent about the state of society, and the establishment wants that discontent directed against immigrants and in a hardline nationalist direction.
The capitalists are more than tolerant of Hanson’s anti-Muslim and bigoted agitation because they are not prepared to tolerate any reforms that will significantly improve the lives of workers, such as higher wages, increased social spending or taxes on the ultra-wealthy. They know that a divided working class is a conquered working class—one more easily exploited and manipulated. They also recognise that the world is becoming more militaristic and that a major war involving Australia seems increasingly probable. They want to create a nastier society that is more likely to accept economic austerity in the name of national unity and sacrifice.
Fighting the far right, therefore, increasingly must mean fighting against capitalism: Hanson and her ilk internationally cannot be separated from the broader ruling-class appetite for militarism, nationalism and the gutting of social welfare and workers’ rights.
Hanson’s core support comes from a reconfigured far right—sections of the Liberals and Nationals, along with those who have been voting for far-right micro-sects in recent elections. It’s people holding on to resentments about pandemic-era public health measures and a sense that not enough is being done for small business “battlers”. It’s people who are inclined to think everyone else is getting an easier ride—people with little sense of social solidarity or collective consciousness. And of course, it’s people who view migrants as the foundation of all other problems: an ABC analysis of recent polling found that more than half of One Nation voters rank immigration as a key motivation for favouring Hanson over the alternatives. Yet the party’s increasing support in the polls also shows that her base is broadening significantly.
This situation won’t easily be turned around. But if we don’t try, it will get much worse. How then should we respond? In 2015, 2016 and 2017, socialists argued that the key thing was to mobilise people on the streets against the far right and against Hanson. The logic was that we had to prevent fascist organisers from recruiting young people, stop them from building branches and stop them from marching in the streets to build their political profiles.
Today, protests against racism and against the far-right turn in politics remain important. In Germany, for example, mobilisations against the fascist Alternative for Germany have been essential for building resistance and building the left more broadly. And in the US city of Minneapolis, tens of thousands involved in local organising against thug federal immigration agents proved that the Trump administration can be pushed back, albeit temporarily.
But we have to be realistic: the forces of the left in Australia have diminished just as the forces of the right have increased. The trade union leaders, who mobilised tens of thousands against Hanson in the 1990s, are entirely absent in offering a lead to workers today—indeed, they have disgracefully been at the forefront of backing Labor governments as they have taken a chainsaw to living standards. Even if the unions did the right thing and organised against the political slide to the right, protests alone would not defeat the far-right: they are taking control of government after government and becoming entrenched in official politics. The time for preventing their rise has passed.
So we need more than protests. We need a political alternative—a socialist pole of attraction for the people disgusted with both the rise of the far right and the failure of the Labor Party and respectable liberal opinion to do anything about it. A socialist organisation that will, unlike the current crop of trade union and ALP leaders, fight for living standards and fight against the bigotry used to divide the working class. The most promising organisation on these lines is the Socialist Party. The steps it has taken so far have been modest. Yet the enthusiasm for an alternative is clear: in less than a year, the party has grown into the largest socialist organisation in Australia in more than half a century. With the rapid rise of the far right, the stakes are high. But without a socialist alternative, the right will continue to make all the running.
