THE OTHER RADICALISM: AN INQUIRY INTO CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIAN EXTREME RIGHT IDEOLOGY, POLITICS AND ORGANIZATION 1975-1995 JAMES SALEAM A Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor Of Philosophy Department Of Government And Public Administration University of Sydney Australia December 1999 INTRODUCTION Nothing, except being understood by intelligent people, gives greater pleasure, than being misunderstood by blunderheads. Georges Sorel. _______________________ This Thesis was conceived under singular circumstances. The author was in custody, convicted of offences arising from a 1989 shotgun attack upon the home of Eddie Funde, Representative to Australia of the African National Congress. On October 6 1994, I appeared for Sentence on another charge in the District Court at Parramatta. I had been convicted of participation in an unsuccessful attempt to damage a vehicle belonging to a neo-nazi informer. My Thesis -proposal was tendered as evidence of my prospects for rehabilitation and I was cross-examined about that document. The Judge (whose Sentence was inconsequential) said: … Mr Saleam said in evidence that his doctorate [sic] of philosophy will engage his attention for the foreseeable future; that he has no intention of using these exertions to incite violence.1 I pondered how it was possible to use a Thesis to incite violence. This exercise in courtroom dialectics suggested that my thoughts, a product of my experiences in right-wing politics, were considered acts of subversion. I concluded that the Extreme Right was ‘The Other Radicalism’, understood by State agents as odorous as yesteryear’s Communist Party. My interest in Extreme Right politics derived from a quarter-century involvement therein, at different levels of participation. Andrew Moore said I was: … an unusual figure … [with] … a genuine academic interest in theories of fascism.2 Participation can affect historical accuracy and integrity. However, in this case, it gave me the advantage of discerning the topography of the Extreme Right. 1 Judge A. Viney, Sentencing Transcript, in R. v James Saleam, District Court Registry File, No. 90/21/1432, p. 6. 2 Andrew Moore, The Right Road?: A History Of Right-Wing Politics In Australia, Melbourne, 1995, p. 121. Note: all works cited in the Introduction shall be cited again in full at their first mention in the text. 1 Between 1975 and 1995, the Australian Extreme Right recruited, upon my estimate, around 11,000 persons. There was a bewildering array of electoral parties, combat parties, student cells, rural action groups, education-structures, violence squads and politicized skinheads. This permanent undercurrent in Australian politics had embraced, among other sectors, intellectuals and bashers, prosperous persons and working class poor, rural and urban voters, and alongside the great mass of mundane believers - a few colourful ‘madmen’. The Extreme Right did not speak with one voice, nor has it ever been as significant as the French Front National or the Italian Alleanza Nazionale; but it was disturbing enough to have invited legislative counter-action, para-State reaction and ritualized denunciation by public figures. My research advantage was clear. I have met hundreds of participants, read thousands of Extreme Right and conservative publications as well as those of their opposition, and directed activities of my own. Personal experience could be brought to bear upon the research. The ‘insider’ also had the advantage of access to participants and their documents - something noticeably missing from many other research efforts. The general objective of this Thesis is to provide an intellectual framework for, and appropriate and necessary detail to the scholarship of, Australian Extreme Right politics. This Thesis may prove unwelcome. Unfortunately, I have been denounced by opponents as the ‘master’ of misinformation.3 However, doctoral work is not propaganda and is subject to scholarly test. That statement encapsulates part of my objective. My researches show that the scholarship of Australian Extreme Right politics is distorted by the very aversion in which this politics is held. Truth cannot be determined if scholarship is intimidated by forces which have no interests in expounding it objectively. The present climate bodes ill for academic analysis of the Extreme Right. Since 1996 (after the time period examined in this Thesis) a storm has centred around the Pauline Hanson/One Nation Party (ONP) ‘phenomenon’. The hysteria directed at this new force does not assist in producing accurate scholarship. Powerful groups have criticized Hanson/ONP as “Extreme Right”. The main voice for Jewish community feeling, The Australian Jewish News, has anathematized Hanson;4 one article went as far as to compare a pre-ONP manifesto, Pauline Hanson: The Truth, to the Protocols Of The Learned Elders Of Zion.5 Mobs influenced by Trotskyist ‘anti-racist’ fronts have rampaged, 3 Daniel Dasey, “Beaten At Own Game”, The Sun Herald, April 20 1997, p. 32; David Greason, I Was A Teenage Fascist, Fitzroy, 1994, p. 204. 4 Sharon Labi, “Jewish Leaders Back Call To Put One Nation Last”, Australian Jewish News (Sydney), May 22 1998, p. 3. 5 David Bernstein, “The Protocols Of The Elders Of Hanson”, Australian Jewish News (Sydney), May 2 1997, p. 20. 2 associating ‘Hanson-ism’ with neo-fascism.6 A series of activist groups such as Campaign Against Racism ‘catered’ for ONP, while Campaign Against Nazis functioned to harass more militant Right groups. If a pseudo-scholarly text, Faces Of Hate: Hate Crime In Australia7 is any indication, the heir of Isi Leibler’s Research Services spy network at Australia-Israel Review became a major player in determining the limits of research into the Extreme Right. Apparently, a ‘network’ of reliable commentators has emerged to stymie genuine inquiry. The developing official theory of the Extreme Right has some central precepts.8 These are that: Anti- semitism and/or neo-nazism is the secret coded message of the Right whether in its Holocaust and Historical Revisionist, conspiratological, or Skinhead violence modes; that the Right is a hodge-podge of hatreds and resentments of cultural, economic and racial change; and that the League Of Rights fathered the Extreme Right. In sum, this dangerous proto-nazi atavism mu st be controlled. To dispute such logic is to invite denunciation by the closed shop. Given that the people who have played roles in criminalizing, harassing and vilifying the Right come forward as its ideological interpreters, we can understand a State/liberal-hegemonic process in train to ensure no Right force ever enters mainstream politics. Unsurprisingly, Right politics has remained a beast in the shadows with even the histories of its leaders and structures falsified to propaganda advantage. A thesis upon a new subject could take various pathways. It could be an investigation into politically motivated violence (or even “hate crime”) or racism and political mobilization, or what sort of Australian joined an Extreme Right organization, or whether it was economic restructuring in the 1980’s which pushed the Extreme Right from the absolute margins and the end of the Cold War which advanced it towards minor political status. However, these hypothetical projects, each of which could establish useful detail (I do take these propositions into account), would be viable only if a framework for the appreciation of the contemporary Extreme Right existed. I cannot accept the discourse of the marginalization-of-the-Extreme-Right as definitive. A central defining question was required. Even the terminology ‘Extreme Right’ is uncertain. This Thesis has as its core question the inter-relationship between the Right and the Australian State. It was because the scholarship of the contemporary Extreme Right is neither extensive nor integrated 6 Sam Wainwright, “Le Pen: Pauline Hanson’s Big Brother”, Green Left Weekly, June 4 1997, p. 15. 7 Chris Cunneen, David Fraser, Stephen Tomsen (eds.), Faces Of Hate: Hate Crime In Australia, Annandale, 1997. 8 ibid, pp. 2-3, 36-37, 44-73, 166, 173, 198-9, 210. This ‘theory’ also underlies innumerable publications. See: David Greason and Michael Kapel, “Divided Nation”, The Courier Mail, June 11 1998, p. 17; Norm Dixon, “Neo-Nazi Thugs Offer Their Services To Hanson”, Green Left Weekly, August 19 1998, p. 14; Stuart Rintoul, Megan Saunders, Jennifer Foreshaw, “Radical Fears Pauline’s Clones”, The Weekend Australian, June 20-21 1998, p. 7; Brett Martin, “Danger Lurks On The Fringes”, The Bulletin, July 28 1998, pp. 26-27 - which reported ASIO’s mixing of nationalists and neo- nazis and fears of “violence prone” groups. 3 that I sought out a theme which had received treatment, albeit for an earlier period - and advanced from there. This Thesis took as bedrock the scholarship of the Australian Right 1919-45. Chapter One, in criticizing and adapting this literature, conceives the then-Australian State as a conservative one with ideological-political characteristics born of the Imperial link. This scholarship described State-dependent and semi-independent paramilitarism directed against the communists and Labor populism. By applying new overseas scholarship on the generic nature of fascism, it was possible to sweep away the mist which obscures the inter-war Right. In determining that the inter-War para- military Right was not fascist, it became possible to define various forms of auxiliary relationship between the Right and the State power and ideology, and work with a more complex tripartite division of the Right: Conservative Right, Extreme Right, Fascist. Further, because fascism was understood as an anti-Establishment ideology with particular points of genesis, I reviewed the proto-fascist elements of Australian socialism, nationalism and cultural pessimism and their synthesis in the native-fascist movement around P.R. Stephensen. These issues were relevant to an appreciation of the contemporary Extreme Right which, as I will show, is clearly partitioned between British and nativist interpretations of Australian identity. With this foundation, the Thesis then approached the 1945-75 period, the prelude to the contemporary Extreme Right.