Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and the Australian Christian Lobby are among 20 groups identified as Australian far-right hate and extremism groups in a new report by a global anti-hate think tank.
The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) is an international group created by veterans of the civil rights group Southern Poverty Law Center, which seeks to identify and chronicle transnational hate groups.
On Wednesday, the group published the report “Far-right Hate and Extremist Groups“, which includes research on the major groups operating in Australia, their history and beliefs.
Citing the rising number of cases of Australian far-right groups and individuals, the report’s authors said that global movements are inspiring terrorism, killings and rights-restricting policies around the world — and are increasingly connected.
“It’s critical that people, locally and globally, understand the far-right extremist landscape, how it operates, and how the dots are connected within countries and transnationally in order to counter the threats from these groups,” said GHAPE co-founder and author Wendy Via.
Beyond notorious neo-Nazi and fascist groups in Australia like the National Socialist Network, the report identifies a number of groups frequently given platforms by mainstream media and politicians.
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party is listed because of its anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, white nationalist and conspiracy ideology. The report refers to the party’s representatives’ public comments, going back to Pauline Hanson’s comments in a Queensland Times letter about Indigenous peoples that led to her disendorsement from the Liberal Party, all the way to recent misinformation and attacks on vaccines.
The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) is also included in the report for its anti-LGBTIQA+ ideology. The authors cite the group’s opposition to same-sex marriage, LGBTIQA+ surrogacy and adoption rights, and its increasing attacks on the trans community. The report also includes Australian anti-trans groups Binary and LGB Alliance Australia.
ACL national director Wendy Frances was unable to comment but thanked Crikey for the opportunity to respond to a “hateful slur”. She sent through a general statement, which is included at the bottom of this piece.
Also identified are many Australian groups’ links to international hate groups. These include far-right Hindu nationalists allegedly attacking Sikhs in Australia, anti-trans groups spawned from UK equivalents, and Australian arms of US-based neo-Nazi groups that have since split up and, according to the authors, likely integrated into Australian hate groups.
“It’s incredibly disturbing to see a growing number of groups boldly advocating for a white ethnostate in Australia,” said GPAHE co-founder Heidi Beirich.
“There is no doubt that the racism and bigotry that Trump unleashed in the US has influenced and emboldened that same sentiment as far away as Australia.”
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has been contacted for comment.
Australia’s hate and right-wing extremism groups, according to the GPAHE
- Australia First Party (white nationalist, anti-immigrant)
- Australian Christian Lobby (anti-LGBTIQA+)
- Australian League of Rights (conspiracy, antisemitism, white nationalist)
- Australian Natives Association, Inc. (anti-immigrant, white nationalist, anti-woman)
- Australian Protectionist Party (anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, white nationalist)
- The Australian Vanguard (white supremacist, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic)
- Binary Australia (anti-LGBTIQA+)
- European Australia Movement (white nationalist, neo-Nazi)
- Love Australia or Leave Party (anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim)
- Golden Dawn Australia (anti-immigrant, white nationalist)
- LGB Alliance Australia (anti-transgender)
- Nationalist Alternative (white nationalist, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant)
- National Socialist Network (neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic, white nationalist)
- One Nation Party (anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, white nationalist, conspiracy)
- Proud Boys Australia (white nationalist, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-woman)
- Rise Up Australia (anti-Muslim, anti-LGBTIQA+)
- SA Mens Health Club (neo-Nazi)
- Society of Western Australian Nationalists (neo-Nazi)
- True Blue Crew (anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, white nationalist)
- White WellBeing Australia (white nationalist)
Australian Christian Lobby statement
The Christian faith, to which the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) is committed to, has, as one of its main tenets, the understanding that human beings are made in the image of God. This affords every person respect. We are called to love others and to serve. Having different opinions on gender, sexuality or life, is not an evidence of hatred or bigotry. ACL works with people from different backgrounds and who have differing opinions. A truly liberal democracy must allow competing worldviews to co-exist. If we label people we disagree with on religious, moral or ethical matters as hateful or intolerant, the world will become a small, sad and dangerous place. ACL remains committed to listening to, and respecting, every Australian, including those we may disagree with.
Lovely sentiments from the Australian Christian Lobby there. It reminds me that last Australia Day I wrote a heartfelt and very personal story on Facebook about some horrifying racism I had personally observed in the Kiimberleys, (no point in putting the whole story here, but it was 40 years ago and involved the station manager telling me that I should have let the aboriginal child die rather than take her to hospital without his permission). Then a very dear Christian friend sent me a Christian newsletter warning about how all the “left” groups were using the indigenous concerns about Australia Day to further their political interests. About half way through this newsletter it descended into hate speech that was quite shockingly awful – enough to make me burst into tears that my lovely and deeply Christian friend, an elder of his church,had thought that response to my story was appropriate. Very sad…
Sadly, some people don’t recognise their own bias or lack of compassion, let alone lack of empathy. Entrenched beliefs are based on faith rather than science so cannot be shifted by logic or evidence, so people with these attitudes often need to be avoided.
I think that the usual conjugation is –
I have sound principles,
You have dodgy beliefs,
S/He is a raving lunatic,
They are beneath contempt.
Well said. We have to watch out for that in ourselves too hey.
It surely cannot have passed the notice of Christians of sincere faith that their religion has been instrumentalised by some very radical seriously anti-democratic and often racist and bigoted politicians particularly in the US, Hungary, South America eg Brazil, Italy and indeed in Australia. Thankfully there are many who have spoken up to defend their religions from being opportunistically utilised by some very cynical populist wannabees.
This is an important point. I’d say there’s a big difference between being a Christian and using Christianity as an excuse for behaviour that is invasive, violent, discriminatory, predatory, etc. That applies to all religion.
The Alexandrian polymath Hypatia (370-415AD) might have had an opinion on that but Peter the Lector (reader) had a different one, resulting in her being skinned alive.
Apropos of such…Christianist, a term used by Andrew Sullivan a conservative, gay, Catholic author and blogger in 2003 concerning the then President, Dubya, The Faux Texan and his push concerning a “Faith Based Administration”, as we saw recently here in Australia with Smirko, The Happy Clapper and his Brethren.
“I have a new term for those on the fringes of the religious right who have used the Gospels to perpetuate their own aspirations for power, control and oppression: Christianists.
Interestingly Sullivan first used the word “Christianist” in 2003 to describe Eric Rudolph, the US religious terrorist, convicted for a series of anti-abortion and anti-gay-motivated bombings across the southern United States between 1996 and 1998, which killed three people and injured 150 others.
Rudolph also planted the bomb at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.
Sullivan expanded concerning Christianism and Islamism.
“Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. …It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.”
“But any pretense of a religious foundation for Christianism breaks down on many of the issues Christianists now consider their highest priority — cutting social services, blocking access to health care, lowering taxes, undermining public education, repealing restrictions on the ownership and use of firearms, endorsing harsh law enforcement methods and restrictions on the right to vote in communities of color, defending the Mexican border, and closing the door to refugees, to name a few.”
There’s an inhouse term for the ACL and fellow travellers, and it is HERETICS.
Talk about love all you like, “love the sinner but hate the sin” prescribes a life of cold showers and loneliness .
“A truly liberal democracy must allow competing worldviews to co-exist” argue the ACL, whose own worldview is that truly liberal democracies should not exist, only christian theocracies. Hard to get my head around that ouroboros kind of thinking…
Ahh, the paradox of tolerance!
One of the most heartening things about groups like the ACL is that while they are loud and connected, they remain a tiny minority out of step with mainstream values. They emanate off a strong “old man yells at cloud” vibe with their message, and it really isn’t going to resonate with a wider society until they learn to give a little, and thankfully they’re too pure in thought to consider such a move.
THe worst of these groups that we have seen in publiic have been given aid and comfort by government inaction, almost entirely from the LNP. Hanson was given status by John Howard who consistently failed to call out her odious bigotry, and even adopted some of her policies it seems.
Logical, given his attitudes and beliefs are similar as well as deeply entrenched, so not shifted by evidence.
That’s the thing about beliefs hey? Almost by definition, they’re not easily shifted by evidence.
As so often, Samuel Johnson had a epigram –
“How rarely Reason guides the stubborn choice, rules the Bold hand or prompts the Suppliant voice.”
(The Vanity of Human Wishes.”
“There is no doubt that the racism and bigotry that Trump unleashed in the US has influenced and emboldened that same sentiment as far away as Australia.”
All of this existed well before Trump in reality. He was just more upfront about it.
Imprimatur of the POTUS counts for *something* though
Interestingly, there are Republicans worried that the tables are turned and extremists are now driving Trump and the Trumpian Republicans rather than the politicians harnessing and manipulating discontent of voters.
That’s something for Peter Dutton to be thinking about as he ponders a move further right. How far do you have to go to keep the new “base” happy, especially if you have to win the voters of PHON and the smaller far right parties to get the numbers of votes needed to win elections, and who else might you lose along the way. And, is there a possibility of losing control at some point?
That has been its policy since its founding in 1871, and its virulent racism and misogyny remained a constant. Australian nationalist historians of the 1950s and 60s thought it was a terrific organisation because of its campaigns for Federation and White Australia. Celebrating 26 January as Australia Day was an ANA project, as was adopting wattle as a national emblem. Aboriginal leader William Cooper objected to the ANA using the word ‘native’. I actually thought they had closed down some years ago. Maybe this a new body that has appropriated its name and nationalist philosophy?
Native:, Noun. a person born in a specified place or associated with a place by birth, whether subsequently resident there or not.