Far-right politics in Australia

Captain de Groot declares the Sydney Harbour Bridge open in March 1932.

The Australian far right rose out of the monarchist and anti-communist movements. Formed in Sydney on 16 February 1931, the New Guard was the first and largest fascist organisation in Australia. It was formed by World War I veteran, Australian monarchist and anti-communist, Eric Campbell. The group comprised mostly returned servicemen and claimed a membership of 50,000 at its peak, including prominent members of society such as aviator Sir Charles Kingsford Smith[1] and former Mayor of North Sydney Hubert Primrose.[2][3]

The New Guard was a paramilitary organisation with its members being well armed and receiving military training. The New Guard under Campbell orchestrated a number of operations, including strike breaking, attacking Labor Party members and "Communist" meetings; they also demanded the deportation of Communists.[4][5][6] During the initial growth of the movement, Campbell was able to attract many ex-soldiers and ex-commanders to the movement.[7]

The New Guard saw the Premier of New South Wales Jack Lang as an immediate threat. The organisation attracted attention when member Francis de Groot, on horseback and at Campbell's direction, upstaged Lang in cutting the ribbon at the opening ceremony of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in protest at Lang's anti-monarchist sentiments.[8][9]

After Lang's dismissal in May 1932 the New Guard's membership declined rapidly.

Colonel Eric Campbell, 1931

The Centre Party was a fascist political party formed in December 1933, following Lang's dismissal and the demise of the New Guard. Eric Campbell established the party after he had met with European fascists and National Socialists such as Sir Oswald Mosley and Joachim von Ribbentrop. Campbell repositioned the remnants of the New Guard away from paramilitary activities and into electoral politics.[10]

The Centre Party contested the May 1935 New South Wales state election, polling 0.60% of the total vote.[11] Following the party's poor showing at the election Campbell withdrew from public life and the party disbanded.

The Australia First Movement was a short-lived Australian fascist movement founded in October 1941. The group was anti-Semitic and national socialist, advocating the corporate state and a political alliance with the Axis powers of Germany,[12] Italy and Japan.

The group was disbanded in March 1942, when a number of its members were secretly interned by the Australian government on suspicion that they might attempt to provide help to Japanese invaders.[13] Two members were convicted of treason. Australia First Movement member and former member of the Centre Party Adela Pankhurst, of the famous suffragette family, was arrested and interned in 1942 for her advocacy of peace with Japan.[14]

The Australian League of Rights is a fascist and anti-Semitic political organisation. It was founded in Adelaide, South Australia by Eric Butler in 1946, and organised nationally in 1960. The party's ideology was based on the economic theory of Social Credit expounded by C. H. Douglas.[15] The League describes itself as upholding the values of "loyalty to God, Queen and Country".

The group inspired groups like the British League of Rights, Canadian League of Rights and the New Zealand League of Rights. In 1972 Butler created an umbrella group, the Crown Commonwealth League of Rights, to represent the four groups; it also served as a chapter of the World League for Freedom and Democracy.[16]

Australians Against Further Immigration (AAFI) was an Australian far-right anti-immigration political party which described itself as "eco-nationalist" and was against positive net immigration. The party was founded in 1989 and dissolved in 2008. The party was deregistered by the Australian Electoral Commission in December 2005, because it was lacking the minimum 500 members required to be registered as a political party.[17]

The Australian National Socialist Party (ANSP) was a minor Australian neo-Nazi party. The party was founded in 1962 by University of Adelaide physics student Ted Cawthron and Sydney council worker Don Lindsay. The group was anti-communist, and supported the White Australia policy and the total annexation of New Guinea.[18][19]

On 26 June 1964, the party's headquarters were raided by police. Smith and four other party members were arrested and convicted of possessing unlicensed firearms and explosives and possession of stolen goods. By 1967 the remnants of the party had joined the newly formed National Socialist Party of Australia.[19]

Jim Saleam, 2013

The National Socialist Party of Australia (NSPA) was a minor Australian neo-Nazi party formed in 1967 by former ANSP leader Ted Cawthron. In May 1968, the ANSP merged into the NSPA, and Cawthron and Frank Molnar attempted to distance themselves and the party from the "jackbooted 'Nazi' image" associated with the ANSP.[20]

In early 1970, Cawthron contested the May 1970 ACT by-election, making him the first National Socialist in Australia to run for public office. The party also made a number of unsuccessful runs for the Senate.[21][22]

Jim Saleam was made deputy leader of the party between 1972 and 1975. Saleam became a prominent figure in far-right politics, going on to found National Action in 1982 and the Australia First Party 1996.[19]

National Action was a militant white supremacist group founded on Anzac Day, 1982 by the former deputy leader of the National Socialist Party of Australia, Jim Saleam and former neo-Nazi David Greason.[23][24]

In 1989, Saleam was convicted of being an accessory before the fact in regard to organising the attempted assassination of African National Congress representative Eddie Funde. Saleam claimed to have been set up by police.[23][25]

In 1991, the group was disbanded following the murder of a member, Wayne "Bovver" Smith, in the group's headquarters in the Sydney suburb of Tempe.[23] Following the murder of Smith, Saleam became NSW chairman of Australia First Party.[23]

The Australian Nationalist Movement (ANM), also known as the Australian Nationalist Worker's Union (ANWU), was a Western Australian neo-Nazi, extreme right-wing group founded and lead by Peter Joseph "Jack" van Tongeren.

In 1987, Van Tongeren distributed 400,000 racist posters around Perth. The posters bore phrases such as "No Asians", "White Revolution The Only Solution", "Coloured Immigration: Trickle Is Now A Flood" and "Asians Out Or Racial War". Van Tongeren is a holocaust denier.[26][27]

In 1989, Van Tongeren staged a series of racially motivated arson attacks, targeting businesses owned by Asian Australians. Van Tongeren served thirteen years in prison for his crimes. In the late 1980s it was revealed that his father was Javanese, making him of Indonesian ancestry. He resumed anti-Asian activities upon his release in 2002 leading to further convictions in 2006.[28]

In 1989, two ANM members murdered police informant David Locke. The murder trial of the two men eventually lead to Van Tongeren being found guilty of 53 crimes and sentenced to 18 years. The two men who murdered David Locke received life sentences.[29][30][31][32][33]

On being released from jail in 2002, Van Tongeren expressed no remorse. In February 2004 three Chinese restaurants, synagogues and Asian-owned businesses where firebombed, plastered with posters and daubed with swastikas. Western Australian police launched "Operation Atlantic" in response to the attacks, leading to the arrest of five men involved in the attacks. The police also identified a plot to harm WA Attorney-General Jim McGinty and his family, among others.[34][35][36]

In August 2004, Van Tongeren and his co-accused Matthew Billing were found and arrested in the Boddington area south-east of Perth. Both men once again faced the courts over the 2004 arson plots.[37] During a hearing on 2 November, Van Tongeren collapsed, was taken to hospital, and later used a wheelchair. Van Tongeren was released from jail on the condition that he leave Western Australia. He currently resides in the eastern states. In 2007 the ANM/ANWU was reported to have been disbanded.[38][39] Van Tongeren has been a member of a number of far-right extremist groups including National Action (Australia) and the Australia First Movement.[26][40][41][42]

Founded in 1988, The Citizens Electoral Council of Australia (CEC) is a minor political party in Australia affiliated with the international LaRouche Movement which was led by American political activist Lyndon LaRouche. The group has been accused, by B'nai B'rith, of being anti-Semitic, anti-gay, anti-Aboriginal and racist. The document cites CEC publications and quotes former CEC members.[43][44]

The group has been accused of "brainwashing" members and engaging in campaigns involving "dirty tricks".[45]

Antipodean Resistance (AR) is an Australian neo-Nazi group. Formed in October 2016, the group's flag features a swastika. The group's logo features the black sun and Totenkopf (skull head) with an Akubra hat, a laurel wreath and a swastika.[46]

Antipodean Resistance promotes and incites hatred and violence, as illustrated in its anti-Jewish and anti-homosexual posters, with graphic images of shooting Jews and homosexuals in the head. One poster called to "Legalise the execution of Jews."[47][48][49]

In 2017, it was reported that ASIO, the Australian national security organisation, was monitoring the group, who were "willing to use violence to further their own interests."[50]

The Australian Defence League (ADL) is a neo-Nazi street gang. The gang is anti-Islam, and has been involved in making terrorist threats, abusing, stalking and doxxing Muslim Australians. The gang was founded in Sydney in 2009 by recidivist criminal Ralph Cerminara. Cerminara has a significant criminal record, including convictions for assault, high-range drink-driving and breaching apprehended violence orders.[51][52]

The Australian Protectionist Party (also known as the Party For Freedom) is a minor far-right anti-immigration party, focused on economic protectionism and white nationalism. The Australian Protectionist Party has been active in protesting against the presence of asylum seekers and Muslims, and has also organised several protests against Sharia law being implemented in Australia. The party has unsuccessfully contested a number of elections, failing to secure more than 1% of the vote in any election it has contested.[53]

The Australia First Party (AFP) is a militant white supremacist political party founded in 1996 by Graeme Campbell and currently led by Jim Saleam. The party stands on a nationalist, anti-multicultural and economic protectionist platform. The Party's current platform includes the reintroduction of the White Australia policy and opposition to Chinese immigration.[24][54][55][56][57]

Campbell was Australia First's leader until June 2001, when he left the party to stand as a One Nation Senate candidate in Western Australia. After serving time in Jail for organising the failed attempted assassination of Eddie Funde, Saleam took control of the party and ran as an its candidate for a seat on Marrickville council, New South Wales, claiming "to oppose Marrickville being a Refugee Welcome Zone". Later that year the party formed its youth wing, the Patriotic Youth League. The party contested the 2010 federal election, the 2013 federal election, the 2016 federal election, the 2017 Cootamundra state by-election, the 2018 Longman by-election, and the 2019 New South Wales state election, but failed to poll at more than 2% on any occasion.[58] Saleam's platform included the reintroduction of the White Australia policy and opposition to Chinese immigration.[57]

On 20 March 2019, Australia First member Nathan Sykes was charged with at least eight offences relating to threats he made to a number of journalists.[59]

Fraser Anning's Conservative National Party is a populist far-right, white nationalist party[60] founded by Fraser Anning in April 2019, when he was a senator for Queensland. Anning had previously been a senator for Pauline Hanson's One Nation and Katter's Australian Party, and sat as an independent before founding the new party. The party contested the 2019 federal election, but failed to win a seat.[61]

Ashfield Community Action group Antifascist poster protesting the presence of Lads Society in Ashfield

The Lads Society is a far-right white nationalist extremist group founded by several former members of the United Patriots Front in late 2017, with club houses in Sydney and Melbourne.[62] The Lads Society came to national prominence after it staged a rally in St Kilda, Victoria, targeting the local African Australian community. Attendees were seen making the Nazi salute and one was photographed brandishing an SS helmet.[62] In 2017, the group's leader Thomas Sewell approached the perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings, Brenton Harrison Tarrant, asking him to join the Lads Society, but Tarrant refused.[63] The group's members and allies attempted to infiltrate the Young Nationals in NSW, and engaged in branch stacking at the May 2018 conference. Lads Society members attained leadership positions in the Young Nationals, but were later forced out of the party.[64] Canadian White nationalists Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux met with Lads Society members during their visit to Australia.

The National Socialist Network is a Melbourne-based neo-Nazi group that claims to be active in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, Perth and several regional cities, but which would not reveal how many members or associates the group has. It has vowed to bring about a “white revolution” and has openly described Indigenous Australians as “subhuman and monkeys”.[65] They also engage in anti-Semitic and other racist behaviour. Its leader is Tom Sewell, an ex-Australian army soldier turned neo-Nazi.[66]

The Patriotic Youth League (PLY) is a neo-Nazi micro group and the youth-wing of the Australia First Party, founded in 2002 by former One Nation activist Stuart McBeth[67][68]

The Q Society of Australia is a far-right, homophobic and Islamophobic organisation that opposes Muslim immigration and the presence of Muslims in Australian society. Founded in 2010, Q Society refers to itself as "Australia's leading Islam-critical organisation" and has stated that its purpose is to fight against the "Islamisation of Australia". The group's events have featured extreme homophobia and Islamophobia.[69]

Reclaim Australia rally, Sydney, April 2015

Formed in 2015, Reclaim Australia is a loosely associated far-right Australian nationalist protest group which draws support from nationalists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other far-right groups, which is primarily focused on opposing Islam. The group holds street rallies and often faces counter-protests from trade unions, human rights and anti-racism activists. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), says that it monitors the group because of its potential for violence.[70]

Protests have been started in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Newcastle,[71] Canberra and Hobart.

The Rise Up Australia Party is a far-right, Christian political party. The party's policy platform is focused on nationalist and fundamentalist Christian values.[72] It is opposed to Islam in Australia and opposes same-sex marriage. Its slogan is "Keep Australia Australian". The party was founded and is led by Pentecostal minister Danny Nalliah, who is also the president of Catch the Fire Ministries. The party opposes multiculturalism, wants to preserve Australia's "Judeo-Christian heritage", has called for cuts to Muslim immigration, and advocates freedom of speech and freedom of religion.[73]

Soldiers of Odin (SOO) is a neo-Nazi group founded in Kemi, Finland, in October 2015, in the midst of the European migrant crisis. The Soldiers of Odin Australia was registered as a non-profit association with the Victorian government in June 2016. That same year the group ran racially driven vigilante "safety patrols" around Federation Square, Birrarung Marr and Bourke Street Mall.[74]

The True Blue Crew (TBC) is an Australian militant white supremacist group.[75] Members and supporters have been linked to right-wing terrorism and vigilantism, and members have been arrested with weapons and on terrorism-related charges. Experts who have studied the group say it appears to be "committed to violence".[76] The True Blue Crew was formed in 2015 as a splinter group from the anti-Islamic Reclaim Australia group, along with a number of small far-right nationalist groups such as the United Patriots Front.[77]

In December 2019 a member of True Blue Crew, Phillip Galea, was convicted of terrorism charges relating to planned bombings of the Victorian Trades Hall and other left wing organisations in Melbourne.[78]

The United Patriots Front (UPF) was a far-right extremist group whose membership was composed of neo-Nazis and fundamentalist Christians.[79][80] Based in the state of Victoria, UPF was a nationalist anti-Islam organisation that stood in opposition to immigration, opposition to multiculturalism and Islam by demonstrations. It was a splinter group from Reclaim Australia group, formed after a dispute between Shermon Burgess and Reclaim Australia organisers. The group has been described by a number of media outlets and journalists as a hate group, and has claimed solidarity with Golden Dawn.[81] The group was disbanded in 2017. The UPF's leaders went on to form a new, more explicitly White nationalist group, the Lads Society later that same year.

Yellow Vest Australia (YVA), formerly known as the Australian Liberty Alliance (ALA), is a minor political party in Australia, with Debbie Robinson as party president. The party is the political wing of Q Society. Founded in 2015, the party is anti-Islamic, with policies focusing on Muslim immigration such as enforcing "integration over separation", replacing multiculturalism with an integrated multi-ethnic society and stopping public funding for "associations formed around foreign nationalities". They have vowed to "stop the Islamisation of Australia".[82]

Australian far-right terrorist Brenton Harrison Tarrant committed the March 2019 mosque shootings at Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 51 people and injuring 50 more. Tarrant had expressed support for two Australian far-right organizations, the United Patriots Front and the True Blue Crew online, and repeatedly praised Blair Cottrell, a neo-Nazi and former leader of the UPF, affectionately calling him "Emperor Blair Cottrell" during a celebration of Donald Trump being elected as President of the United States in 2016; he also donated money to the UPF.[83][84][85]