Ellie noticed something striking during a recent doorknock she helped organise in Melbourne’s west to build local opposition to the rise of the far right. “On one street in West Footscray, every person I spoke to said they were angry or concerned about One Nation”, she recounts. But they were also worried they might be the only ones feeling that way. So, as she moved from door to door, she relayed that everyone else in the street felt the same. “You could just see their relief and confidence.”
Ellie is among hundreds of Socialist Party activists and members in Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and Canberra fighting back against the anti-migrant, anti-Muslim and pro-capitalist politics of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.
It’s a campaign that, through doorknocks, leafleting and information stalls across suburban areas, is striking a chord. “So many ordinary people—migrants, Muslims, women, the LGBTQ community and workers—rightly see One Nation as a threat”, says Victorian Socialists’ Western Metro candidate Anneke Demanuele.
Mainstream media outlets and parties are normalising far-right talking points by agonising over the supposedly “legitimate concerns” Hanson claims to be addressing with her racist scapegoating. The Liberal Party is lurching further to the right, trying to outflank One Nation. And the Labor Party, too, is capitulating to the bigotry Hanson is spewing. The Socialist Party’s campaign is an anti-racist and anti-capitalist antidote to these developments.
“At the last doorknock in Epping”, Victorian Socialists’ Northern Metro candidate Omar Hassan says, “it was heartwarming to see people’s faces turn from scepticism to relief as they understood we were there to explicitly attack Hanson’s bigotry and build solidarity with them and their families”.
It’s important to draw a line in the sand and not give an inch to the racism promoted by One Nation. It’s also important to expose the corporate interests behind Hanson and explain that they want to ratchet up nationalism and cohere the population around a supposedly shared national interest, rather than distinct class interests.
This argument isn’t rocket science. Hanson is backed by billionaires like Gina Rinehart, and she consistently votes with the Liberal Party—so her claims to be some sort of “anti-establishment” outsider are just more bullshit from another professional politician. Highlighting One Nation’s pro-capitalist agenda is important for clarifying what the far right actually represents and what kind of politics is needed to challenge it. As Hassan explains:
“The far right are now an extended part of mainstream capitalist politics. This is a product of the Murdoch press, billionaire funding and support, and the general breakdown of traditional parties and politics over the last few decades. The US shows us what it looks like when the extreme racism and militarism of parties like One Nation are in power.”
Demanuele puts it bluntly:
“The far right want to impose the most stripped-back, brutal version of capitalism. More attacks on workers’ rights, more tax cuts for businesses. A dog-eat-dog society more like the USA, with extreme poverty, social decay and pittance minimum wages.”
The point of the Socialist Party’s anti-Hanson campaign is not simply to encourage the many people horrified by One Nation’s rise to get involved in anti-Hanson activism. It is to turn passive opposition to Hanson into general opposition to the far right and the system that enables her.
“Nobody is coming to save us from these monsters”, Demanuele says. “The time to organise and fight is now.”
Victorian Socialists are hosting a public forum, “Melbourne says no to Hanson”, at Coburg Town Hall, 3pm Saturday 16 May.
