Australian politicians are playing NatCon politics

Sep 25, 2024
Welcome to the Australia.

Peter Dutton’s campaign to make Palestinian refugees into figures of fear mirrors the provocations to the recent UK Islamophobic riots. These were inspired by politicians such as Nigel Farage as much as by far-right influencers. Both examples are connected to Donald Trump’s debate amplification of the far-right American lie that Haitian immigrants are eating the pets of people in Springfield, Ohio.

Dutton may be inadvertently playing into an international trend. His prior record of demonising refugees, depicting Lebanese migration as a destructive feature of Australia’s immigration history, combined with his decision to fight the Voice to Parliament in a way that promoted racist abuse of First Peoples, suggest, however, that the more recent campaign is not an accident.

Anthony Albanese’s decision to turn his back on the question about Queer identity in the census and then to exclude the gender aspect of the question were cowardly capitulations to the same politics. Donald Trump also declared in the debate that Kamala Harris’s government would seek “to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison”.

Around the world, far-right political parties and influencers are fomenting fear of a racial other — often coded as Muslim — and those not living “traditional” lives. The choice to demarcate racism by a religious label is fitting: it is a movement where ethnonationalism is coded by a dominant religion. The Christian Nationalists of America mean “white” when they battle for a “European” and “Christian” America.

The self-styled intellectual centre of the movement is National Conservatism (NatCon). The statement of principles at its core was devised in 2019 by a series of men with important connections. The driving force in rehabilitating nationalism from its Nazi era is Yoram Hazony. He is a Jewish nationalist. Note that this linked interview is hosted by John Anderson, former National Party deputy Prime Minister, Alliance for Responsible Citizenship co-founder and YouTube influencer.

Another designer is John O’Sullivan who is one of the key connections between Australian right-wing politics and media into the Orbán sphere of influence. Tony Abbott, Alexander Downer and The Australian’s Greg Sheridan are the most notable Australian figures in Budapest. In that debate, Trump expressed mutual admiration for illiberal Viktor Orbán when asked to name a world leader who admired him.

For an Australian audience, it is also important to note that News Corp culture warrior Miranda Devine is one of the NatCon signatories, identified in that list as belonging to Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. The op/ed pages of Murdoch print publications and Sky News constantly act as the primary infiltrators of NatCon ideas into Australian civic debate.

NatCon is a movement that depicts itself as post-liberal. The public cannot be given the freedom to make decisions for itself any longer, personally or politically, because the public has shown that it is dissolute and feckless when it has such freedoms. These “conservative” figures supported democracy as long as they believed there was a “moral” or “silent” majority on whom their politicians could depend for electoral success and the suppression of dissident opinions. Having seen that the majority is more tolerant of difference, these “intellectuals” have opted to be post-democratic.

This aspect of the right strongly overlaps with white supremacist and antisemitic forces, with bigotry of all kinds present. This is veiled in NatCon by the fact that both Jewish nationalists and Hindu nationalists are core to the project. The shared Islamophobia temporarily unites the parties against the inherent fissures.

All these factions propound their identity’s risk of “race suicide.” In Israel, this is manifested in both the apartheid nature of the political system as well as the many genocidal expressions publicised by government politicians. In India, Narendra Modi himself campaigned on the risk of being outbred by Muslims in this year’s election. Natalism also unites the movement.

As a result, non-compliant women are a key target. Australians would be foolish to trust that this aspect of the project is not on the gameplan for our own politics. Women must, according to this worldview, absent themselves from the civic space and return to churning out babies without access to reproductive rights. The op/ed pages of The Australian feature regular columns dedicated to celebrating traditional roles for women. Some Republicans, much further down the path of this trajectory than their Australian partners, have begun to discuss ending access to contraception, to no-fault divorce and even changing the franchise to a family vote where the father of the house votes for his wife as well as for his children.

Whether Dutton’s campaign against Palestinian refugees reflects a shared investment in NatCon politics or merely rhymed with it is a question that remains unanswered.

NatCon’s local and international figures, however, are dedicated to making sure that they build an Australian right-wing bloc that promotes its principles and its bigotries.

NatCon has strong personnel overlaps with the Atlas Network’s junktanks. Many Atlas operatives are listed with their identifying Atlas affiliation as signatories to its Statement and as speakers at its conferences. Atlas junktanks (alongside those from the Christo fascist Council for National Policy) are at the core of Project 2025.

Like Project 2025, NatCon is a movement meant to prevent effective climate action. Both are supported directly and indirectly by fossil fuel dollars.

NatCon is the pseudo-intellectual body that brings the fascistic politics of the transnational Right to the “conservative” thinkers, politicians and money. The interconnections with other similarly-driven conferences are overt. Conservative Political Action Conferences and Liz Truss’s PopCon are examples.

Australia’s tackiest Atlas junktank, Libertyworks, has its CPAC Australia taking place on 5 and 6 October. The Atlas-affiliated Institute of Public Affairs is one of its “platinum sponsors”. The other is the Atlas-interconnected Advance body responsible for so much climate denial propaganda. This page still boasts its defeat of the Voice referendum. National Party politicians join the more fringe Right politicians at this event. The marquee speaker for 2024 is Liz Truss, Atlas operative.

The pre-eminent local Atlas junktank, the Centre for Independent Studies, has its annual Consilium conference listed for 24 to 26 October.

It takes place immediately after the inaugural ARC Australian Chapter conference on the 22 October, allowing international speakers and guests to travel to both. Niall Ferguson, for instance, is on the ARC Advisory Board and is a speaker at both conferences, with links also to NatCon. ARC launched its first conference in London during Halloween last year.

Peter Costello is listed as a speaker at October’s ARC event, added to the roster of Liberal and National party figures connected to the body.

These events happen out of the mainstream. The ARC event is invitation only with no website. Most Australians do not read The Australian, missing the constant NatCon politics in its op/ed pages. We cannot afford to ignore the attempts to make this ugly politics central to Australian “conservatism”.

We have seen in Springfield, Ohio, just as in the recent riots in the UK that violence and bloodshed can follow this kind of race-baiting political gambit. In the short term, it is almost impossible to heal the divisions thus created.

Australians must understand our radicalising “conservative” politics as part of a dangerous transnational movement.

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