What do I mean by 'Australian fascism'? I mean the ideas of white nationalism, Neo-Nazism, neofascism - the subject of this article here on the Far Right in the Ukraine and the Balkans - as manifested here in Australia. These ideas form part of a post-war Far Right tradition chronicled adequately enough in Martin E. Lee's Beast Reawakens (1997) - a dreadful book written by a liberal antifa but one which serves as a good history of the developments in the Western Far Right since WWII.
The Far Right, neofascist idea has seen rises and falls, peaks and valley, in its fortunes, and in Australia, towards the end of the present decade, it has slumped. A strange malaise, at present, grips the movement.
As to what has brought this about - the first reason is as follows. The force of Anglo conservatism acts as a countervailing weight to any imported ideas from the Continent (and neofascism, Third Positionism, National Bolshevism, are imports from the Continent, mostly from Germany). Australians fought in the Boer War, WWI and WWII for the British, in the Vietnam War and the Afghanistan War for the Americans: fighting for the Anglo, and against Germany in particular, is in our blood. We see ourselves as part of the Anglosphere, and it is to the politics of the Anglosphere to which Australians will return when times are uncertain.
The second reason is that in Australia from around 2014 to 2015, the Australian Far Right bought heavily into a new British export - the ideas and approaches of the anti-Islamic 'Patriot' movement, as exemplified by the English Defence League, the Football Lads Alliance, Casuals United and a host of other Far Right organisations and gangs formed out of the British soccer hooligan movement. The problem with the 'Patriot' idea - as manifested here in Australia - was not that it failed, but that it succeeded, beyond anyone's wildest imaginings. In the space of a few months, it gathered hundreds, if not thousands, of followers and mobilised hundreds at probably what were the biggest Far Right marches and rallies in Australian political history. Far Right nationalism in Australia for many years since the war has been situated in the shadows and fringes, but in the peak years of the 'Patriot' movement, it was brought kicking and screaming out of the darkness. Here were ideas being brought to the masses with a vengeance. But the 'Patriots' lacked the political infrastructure needed to sustain the movement, and after a time, its followers realised that there was little of substance to it - there was no 'there' there. And so it collapsed. The activists who had signed up with the 'Patriot' movement were left high and dry - like drug takers who, after ingesting a drug, experience euphoria and an onset of energy, and then collapse into depression and exhaustion following the inevitable come down. Under the influence of drugs, one goes from hero to zero in the space of a few hours. Would the drug taker have been better off had he not taken it? The answer is yes. That answer would be sensible, and it would be sensible, too, to damn and curse the men who had sold us the drug - the hucksters and pied pipers who had foisted the anti-Islamist, 'Patriot' movement upon us.
After the implosion of the 'Patriot' movement, the Far Right contracted. The 'Patriot' movement had opened up doors, and just as abruptly, closed them: the 'Patriots' showed the Far Right that a connection to the masses was possible - that the Far Right could be transformed into a mass movement - and then curtailed that possibility. After 2015, the Far Right would be forced to return to its old venues - talks and meetings were to take place once again only in bars and club houses - and its old shadowy existence. The remnants of the 'Patriot' leadership (those who were not informants and agents provocateurs) renewed their political activity, but this time went inward, not outward. They formed what the Germans would call a Männerbund which sought to encourage the pursuit of physical fitness among its members. (Politically, it leaned in the direction of Alt Rightism, 4Chanism and Trumpianism). But the overweight and unfit members entering the Männerbund gym remained so going out. As a result, a strange Far Right version of 'fat acceptance' and 'body positivity' took root, where overweight men were upheld as the ideal: they were to be considered to be 'big' and 'strong', just the sort of men who were to stand up to commies in a street battle, in comparison to the men of the Far Right who were slender and blessed with flat stomachs.
We certainly have traveled a long way from the viewpoint of Otto Skorzeny, Otto Ernst Remer, Francis Parker Yockey and the other personalities of Lee's Beast Reawakens. It should be noted that the journey has taken us away from Europe and back to America. Under Obama, whatever appeal America had to the Far Right - in Europe and Australia - melted away, and Russia adroitly stepped in to fill the vacuum, cementing its position by around 2014 (the year of the annexation of the Crimea and the beginning of the war in Eastern Ukraine). America staged a comeback after Trump, and Putin receded shortly thereafter, and it is at this point that 4Chanism and Alt Rightism hit their high water mark. But, despite the fact of his good intentions, Trump has shown himself to be ineffectual at delivering his promises on immigration, whether it be legal or illegal, and now the Far Right is looking to Hungary and Italy for heroes... But the break is not yet complete. So Far Rightism in Australia has taken a circuitous path back to the Angloism of WWI and WWII, the Angloism which fought and defeated (what Yockey calls) 'Prussian Socialism' in not one but two world wars. Hence the malaise.
