On August 31st, across Australia, something like fifty-two thousand pairs of feet, according to some estimates, come marching out onto the streets, toting the southern cross and their blue, whites and reds. (not to be confused with America’s patented Red, White and Blue) In Melbourne, people from all walks of life – ordinary working Mums and Dads, concerned about the integrity of their country! – walk side by side with one another… and they also walk side by side with members of the Australian National Socialist Network (NSN) all the way to the steps of parliament, where their leader Thomas Sewell gave a speech before joining a mob of NSN members in attacking the Aboriginal site Camp Sovereignty. But Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders have been in Australia for yonks, so why target them in a march that was, apparently, just about bringing mass immigration to a halt? 
Hint: Thomas Sewell and the National Socialist Network a lot more than just overly patriotic Australians.  
I sat down to talk to Professor Al Gillespie about rising anti-immigrant rhetoric as well as Sewell’s attack on Camp Sovereignty, and he made the comment that “Sewell’s issue isn’t immigration.” I had to rack my brain on that for a bit, but it made sense: It’s not about immigration for the NSN, it’s a race thing, Sewell would welcome a thousand blonde hair, blue eyed Immigrants, even if they were Polish and would have a horrible effect on the lightbulb installation industry. These people that we see are obsessed with the idea of the White Australia policy and creating a totally homogenous society. 
 
There is an idea that the march was hijacked by the NSN. When I mentioned this to Gillespie, he said, “You’ll often find that these people will take control of a platform to get more exposure and notoriety. I think people tried to seize control of the vehicle. In Liberal Democracy you want to find the middle ground, but extremists keep taking it backwards and forwards,” (cue hand pendulum) “so that middle ground can be hard to find right now, and extremists want the middle ground because it gives them the most [political] firepower.” I think Al is right, that the NSN used an event they knew would be filled with people who would likely otherwise describe themselves as ‘ambivalent’ and who are most concerned with what they can see in front of them: housing, groceries, and other amenities and necessities having their price pumped up, and applying this to a natural intuition of Supply and/versus Demand theory. But I can’t buy that it was a hijacking, not when they were basically handheld down the plane aisle and let into the proverbial cockpit. I think that for the average attendee, it was genuinely an attempt to get the Government to listen, but it’s real function was for demagogues like property heir Hugo Lennon and extremists like Sewell to disseminate (and accelerate) narratives about cultural tensions into the masses, and they accomplished that goal, there are probably a hundred dozen irony-poisoned young white men right now who view Sewell as a countercultural icon who will deliver them from their plights, some of which, Gillespie says, include “[…]Concerns about loss of identity, loss of economic control, about changing communities and there’s concerns about the way that the possessions we all thought were once strong and traditional are up for grabs.”  
It’s a reaction to a feeling that the current state of things—which includes the presence of new ‘others’; rainbow communities, more vocal expressions of Indigenous cultures, and the arrival of new demographics—is set up against them, and that there is a path to be traced back. In a world of increasing alienation, it’s a lot easier for us to give face(s) to this abstract concept of identity than try to grapple with the more nebulous social machinery at play, and that leads to a lot of incensed voices that are searching for targets to spit venom at.  

And it’s not just some issue across the pond, as much as the past decade plus has seen New Zealand advertised to the world as the happy place where all the hobbits live and where you’ll be safe if there’s a nuclear war, there has been the same sort of reactionary politics fermenting in Aotearoa, and it’s seen a noticeable spike since 2019. If you’ve been around Hogan Street lately, you might have encountered posters featuring an edited version of the Waikato Draught mascot alongside text reading ‘White Waikato’ (lol) and ‘Hail Hamilton’.  

When an ideology is so entrenched in the vibes and aesthetics of violence, when should the government step in? Should we allow these voices to be out in the open to invite critique? To prevent echochambers from forming under suppression? But we already have those echochambers, and we already have these voices out there, and it’s leading to violence. What do we stand to gain from having these voices in the public arena?