The neo-Nazis behind the ‘March for Australia’
You may have seen one of the hundreds of videos on social media (or more recently also stories in the Murdoch press) promoting the “March for Australia” protests against “mass migration” that are set to take place in cities around the country this Sunday 31 August.
The talking points in these videos and other promotional materials for the rallies track closely with those on the event website. There, next to the claim that “80 percent of Australians want immigration reduced”, is the question, posed under the heading of “weakened identity”: “who are we as a nation, when one in three people were born overseas?”
This, to anyone familiar with theories and narratives popular on the far right, could be taken as a pretty unsubtle reference to the “great replacement theory”, according to which mass migration is a conspiracy being carried out by Western elites to replace the white population with immigrants from the global south.
In its contemporary iteration, this theory arose from the work of French far-right novelist and conspiracy theorist Renaud Camus, but its origins trace back to late 19th century European antisemitism and it has been passed down to contemporary far-right and neo-Nazi movements via the writings of Adolf Hitler and other 20th century fascists. When neo-Nazis held a mass march in the US city of Charlottesville in 2017, for instance, one of their favoured chants was “Jews will not replace us!”
The fact that an association with these kinds of theories is barely concealed beneath the veneer of respectability that March for Australia organisers have fostered is cause enough for concern. Perhaps though it’s all a coincidence? The more mainstream forces involved in the rallies certainly would like us to believe so. To get to the bottom of it, let’s dive a little deeper.
On 3 August this year, a video by Sam Bamford calling for a rally against mass migration was posted to TikTok and Instagram. The post quickly gained traction, reaching hundreds of thousands of views in a few days. According to a subsequent public X Spaces stream with one of the nationwide organisers of the rally who goes by the name of “Bec Freedom”, the video’s virality prompted certain unnamed individuals to reach out to Sam and to put him in touch with her. Since then, Sam has relinquished any involvement in the rallies, and responsibility for organising them has passed to people described in the stream as “trusted individuals” within the far-right movement.
There have been several developments that point to the involvement of neo-Nazis from the National Socialist Network (NSN). The “March for Australia” website was created on 8 August, the day before the NSN’s national conference, which took place in the Victorian town of Bacchus Marsh on the weekend of 9-10 August. Notably, the website uses the same content management system and fonts as the NSN’s “White Australia” website.
Perhaps most damning though is the fact that among the revolving cast of state organisers named on the march’s Facebook events, those who have been identified (most are using aliases) have either been NSN members, or have worked closely and directly with the NSN in the past. This includes Matt Trihey (one of the on-again, off-again Victorian organisers), who is a founder of white supremacist organisation the National Workers Alliance and former Lads Societymember who was most recently in the news for getting punched in the face by an elderly woman at an election event in Kooyong earlier this year.
Once the march began to gain traction online, notable Zionist organisers and far-right content creators from different cultural backgrounds expressed interest in attending and helping to promote the rallies. This prompted an angry tirade from none other than NSN leader Tom Sewell, who complained in an 11 August post on his telegram channel that “after only just arriving home from our summit today [the NSN’s 9-10 August national conference], I have been informed that foreign fifth columns are attempting to hijack our August 31st public rally for Australia. Australians must say NO to Israeli, Palestinian, Chinese and Indian foreign interference trying to hijack our common-sense patriotic spirit. White Australians must assemble on August 31st against the traitors and foreigners who are trying to destroy our great nation!”
Even on the more outwardly “respectable”, public-facing level the veneer has sometimes slipped. In the X Spaces stream mentioned earlier, “Bec Freedom”—the main public face of the rallies on a national level—stated that the march is to “protect white culture, heritage and way of life”. In a previous X Spaces stream she also said that “we need to see violence” like what happened in the 2005 Cronulla Riots. This argument wasn’t met with disgust or apprehension, but by her co-hosts saying it didn’t go far enough.
On available evidence then we can only come to one conclusion. The March for Australia isn’t some wishy washy far-right populist event patched together by suburban “mums and dads” with legitimate concerns. It has been initiated and built with direct neo-Nazi involvement every step of the way. And at its core isn’t limited to the demand for a reduction in rates of immigration, but the plan to build a movement that will violently target anyone deemed not to fit with the NSN’s vision of a racially “pure”, Nazi-led, white Australia.
Wherever possible, these rallies should be actively countered by socialists, pro-Palestine activists, and all those concerned with standing in solidarity with migrants and against the far right and fascism (in Melbourne a counter rally has been organised meeting at 11am Sunday at the State Library). Against their hatred and division, we must advance a vision centred on anti-racist solidarity, collective action and democracy to advance working-class interests against the dog-eat-dog ideologies of capitalism that Nazis aim to take to their most barbaric extremes.
