When fascists march, the left must get organised
Last Sunday’s March for Australia was a significant moment for the far right across the country, as goons draped in Australian flags took to the streets in substantial numbers. In Melbourne and Sydney, they brought out close to 10,000 people, while in Adelaide, Brisbane, Hobart and Newcastle their numbers were in the hundreds or thousands. While the marches didn’t reach the size and militancy of the anti-lockdown demonstrations in Melbourne during the COVID era, they are the biggest explicitly racist demonstrations for some decades.
It was never made public who exactly organised the marches, which called for an end to mass immigration. But in many places, particularly in Melbourne, it was clear that the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network played an important role. Even where the NSN were less central, the strategy was the same: far right forces sought to build a relatively broader right-wing movement around anti-migrant racism. That is, this was an attempt by Nazis and their ilk to try and enter the mainstream of Australian political life.
None of this would have been possible without the Murdoch press, which has clearly decided that becoming a Fox News tribute act is its best chance of staying relevant. Rupert’s local minions want to see Australia become more like the US and UK, where the far right is ascendant. So, they provided free advertising to boost the “March for Australia”, with the Daily Telegraph even publishing the official promotional leaflet. The Seven TV network, owned by billionaire Kerry Stokes, also publicised the rally, continuing its tradition of promoting filth like Pauline Hanson and Ben Roberts-Smith.
The movement produced by this classic alliance of fascists and billionaires was a predictable orgy of racism, anti-leftism and conspiracy theories. In a few cities, speakers promoted the “great replacement theory”, which posits that Western governments are consciously replacing white people with migrants. (Yes, those same governments that are incarcerating, deporting and drowning record numbers of refugees, migrants and asylum seekers the world over.) In Melbourne and Sydney, well-known neo-Nazis received rapturous applause, while in Adelaide the crowd went ballistic after a member of the NSN had a microphone wrenched from his hands, insisting on his right to speak. The Melbourne rally transformed into a terrifying pogrom against migrants and people of colour, before culminating in a violent attack on Camp Sovereignty, a protest camp led by Indigenous activists since 2006.
It's clear beyond doubt that the NSN played a key role in these demonstrations. But the despicable rhetoric was far from limited to the Nazis. Each and every speaker raged against migrants in their own deranged way, at times remembering to qualify their hate by insisting they were not against all migrants, before collapsing into calls to deport them all. Politicians Pauline Hanson, Malcolm Roberts and Bob Katter addressed the crowds.
The fact that the fascists can make what sounds like a coherent link between housing and migration is a result of much more mainstream racism. For years, we’ve been subjected to arguments about how migration is leading to higher house prices, led by the Coalition and encouraged by Labor. This is reinforced by the lies told by the housing industry about so-called housing shortages, which continue to be peddled by politicians, the mainstream media and the vast bulk of capitalist economists, despite being systematically debunked.
But the reality is that very, very few of those on the streets were mobilised by economic concerns. The typical attendee was a 55-year-old white man, the vast majority of whom would have owned their own homes and/or businesses. One of the main organisers in Melbourne is Hugo Lennon, heir to a property developer worth hundreds of millions. In any case, there were no signs on the day complaining about housing, rent prices, failing education or health systems, or any such issues. This was not a protest about living standards, but a national day of racism and bigotry. Anyone who pretends it had anything to do with the former is giving cover to the Nazis and their followers.
Unfortunately, the media and political class have taken the bait hook line and sinker, earnestly discussing how the housing crisis and cost of living issues triggered these demonstrations. This is echoed by political leaders, shamefully including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who described the far-right hooligans as possessing “legitimate concerns”. The anti-fascist left should have no truck with this line of argument. These racist thugs need to be crushed, not empathised with.
In Melbourne and Sydney, a coalition of anti-fascist activists argued that the weekly Palestine rallies should take on the issue politically, and the resulting mobilisations were the largest anti-fascist actions seen for many years. Elsewhere, the left was less organised and far less effective in responding. In any case, the far right had the element of surprise on the weekend. Knowing what we now know, it’s clear that the left needs to be better organised for the future, to take to the streets in a show of unity and strength only possible through united action. We have prevented the far right’s growth before, and we can do it again.
Having said that, developing a serious anti-fascist approach means looking at the wider context for this resurgence in far-right sentiment. Unlike during the days of Reclaim Australia (a revival of the far right in the mid-2010s), which was a peculiarly Australian phenomenon, today the far right is surfing a wave of international success. In many European countries, fascists and the far right are playing substantial roles both in government and opposition. In the US—the most powerful country on the planet—Trump is in charge, leading the most aggressively reactionary and authoritarian administration in living memory. Alongside Putin’s Russia, Israel’s ethno-nationalism has become a model and an inspiration for fascists the world over, even as they continue to hold deeply antisemitic views.
More broadly, the growth of the far right reflects the crisis in the old strategy of capitalist domination, sometimes known as neoliberalism. This model emphasised trust in the free market (except in its love of union busting) and was prepared to tolerate symbolic improvements around certain social issues. Now there’s been a hard shift back to economic nationalism as the ruling class respond to rising imperialist tensions. Inequality has risen dramatically alongside the drastic decline of trade unions, and the rich rely increasingly on authoritarianism and bigotry to keep workers repressed and distracted.
But while it’s important to build anti-fascist coalitions and actions where possible, alone such work is inadequate. Capitalism creates the conditions where fascism can breed, and as long as it exists so too will the far right. Mainstream capitalist politicians, be they social democrats, centrists or conservatives, all promote “moderate” versions of the ideas that make up fascist ideology: bigotry, hierarchy, oppression and militarism. So aside from day-to-day battles, the urgent task remains to construct a powerful socialist movement with roots in the working class, with all its wonderful diversity. Only by developing such an instrument and then using it to overthrow the rich and make capitalism history, can we end the far right for good.
