ORIGINS OF “THE OTHER RADICALISM”

CHAPTER ONE

A LONG VIEW: THE QUESTION OF FASCISM, THE EXTREME RIGHT AND THE CONSERVATIVE AUSTRALIAN STATE 1919 - 1945

Chapter One is not a history of the inter-war Right but essentially a treatment of theoretical issues arising from previous academic research.

First, it re-interprets the Australian Right through the prism of new scholarship on the nature of fascism, partitioning it typologically to create a new paradigm. The new interpretation dismisses the claim that the inter-war paramilitaries were fascist. It concentrates upon the relationship of these varied forces with the State and the dominant class.

Second, the Chapter argues that intrusive migrant-based fascist structures were irrelevant to the Australian Right.

Third, the Chapter examines the related issues of proto-fascism and native fascism to locate historical-political source-pools for fascist mobilization. However, native-fascism was abortive for reasons which are explored.

The long view focuses on the consolidation of the conservative State defusing various challenges and threats. It makes particular conclusions about the character of Right politics which provide some essential background to its evolution after 1945, including some images and ideas destined to survive into the contemporary period.

1. A Methodological Tool: The Concept Of Generic Fascism

An effective definition of fascism is a methodological tool for analysis of the Australian Extreme Right. However, this Thesis will reject equating fascist ideology with random historical specifics of the ‘fascist epoch’ 1919-45.

The verdict on fascism easily became the victim of the plethora of theories advanced to explain it. Fascism has been seen as - moral crisis or breakdown of cultural optimism rendered explosive by the effects of the Great War; a derivative of peculiar individual national histories; a totalitarianism for the age of atomized masses; a psychosexual disorder; a new materialism which replaced the class-struggle with the conflict of nations and races; a developmental dictatorship; anti-modernism; the last resort of finance capitalism to forestall proletarian revolution; a revolt of the petty bourgeoisie; a species of marxism; a violent anti-marxism; a structural problem of particular societies; a new Bonapartism.[1]

Most theories limited fascism to the 1919-45 period and to particular European social-economic arrangements. Some definitions were inadequate, while others battled to establish the significance of fascist conduct or method[2]. Certainly, the search for generic fascism was obscured by the welter of theories. However, this ‘quest’ was advanced by the postulate that fascism resulted from a synthesis of nationalism and socialism.[3]

This Thesis will rely upon the work of several researchers who, while still clashing on some points, explored the contention that fascism’s ideological ‘mystery’ can be unravelled by identification of core components. Roger Griffin has presented a revolutionary definition:

Fascism is a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism.[4]

Roger Eatwell was supportive:

Fascist ideology is therefore a form of thought which preaches the need for social rebirth in order to forge a holistic national radical Third Way. This is a formulation which clearly excludes many alleged examples of fascism.[5] (my emphasis)

Such interpretation allowed that fascism could appear in varied forms and implied a peculiar quality of the core: its power to ‘combine’ with compatible historical, philosophical and sociological theory (and in the singular case of Nazism - racist-theosophy or Ariosophy).[6] Fascism could be likened to a virus: its DNA ‘finger-print’ immutable, but its surface-coating was variable in quality or expression. The alternate search for a typological ‘fascist minimum’ expressed programmatically or stylistically - though useful - was superseded by the identification of a mythic core.

The crisp Griffin definition has three elements[7]:

· Palingenesis: the ‘rebirth’ of the racial-national social organism, its awakening from lethargy, its revitalization in the struggle against decadence, the reaffirmation of the elan-vital in defence and propagation of the cultural legacy.

· Populism: a revolutionary social ethic, a solidarism of the producers against ‘parasitism’, an equality of the productive classes which protects private property and achievement; a mobilization of these classes (workers, middle class, farmers) against the liberal-capitalist bourgeoisie; a new collectivist economy.

· Ultra-Nationalism: an integral not a liberal nationalism, a nationalism defined by blood and history which centres on the Nation as the natural unit of human organisation in the modern epoch; it mobilizes the folk-community towards its palingenesis and thereby faces the ‘struggle-for-existence’.

Historical fascism was often labelled, as a result of its anti-rationalism, ‘irrational’, void of intellectual weight. However, as Sternhell observed, it did not require a Marx; yet it was as sophisticated a structure as socialism, as total a value-system as liberalism.[8] The exegesis of fascism’s core ideas was carried out by a legion of philosophers, political theorists and sociologists as diverse as Roberto Michels, Oswald Spengler, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Ernst Junger, Giovanni Gentile and Pierre Drieu La Rochelle.[9] The fascists considered themselves the enemies of reactionary rightism, 19th century materialism and Western money-worship. As the arrestors of ‘Decline’, they would renew civilization.

Spanning the classic-fascist period to contemporary times, the important ‘neo-fascist’, Maurice Bardeche,[10] wrote:

We seek in vain the book of fascism: no such bible exists ... Fascism is not a doctrine ... [but] ... an obscure and remote longing written in our blood and in our souls.[11]

Bardeche prophesized it would return to confront extra-European challenges from superpowers, the Third World and marxist-liberal ideologies - but with a new name and externalia:

... with the face of an innocent child whom we would not recognize ... and the Spartan order will be born again.[12]

Bardeche’s romantic and mystical position, supportive of fascism’s virtue, received an academic reinterpretation from a critic. Eatwell described the fascist core as “spectral-syncretic”.[13] The “longing” for transendence energizes fascism, and Eatwell’s characterisation of the core suggests fascism, once mobilized, has an intense capacity for assimilation of anti-system, populist, ultra-nationalist opinion.[14]

Significant scholarship warns against analysing fascism by materialist or reductionist methods, and against confusing it with the authoritarian conservative or militant Right. Clearly, it shared some ideas and methods with the Right - as did Social Democracy with Bolshevism - and could be a form of extreme Rightism. However, its mythic synthetic core allows it to escape the gravity of the Left-Right dichotomy.[15] The call for a movement of blood, or the Nation, or of the entire civilization challenged by a Spenglerian crisis, is unique to fascism. Its relationship with the Right was therefore problematical, inclusive of rivalry, distrust and occasional courtship followed by violent struggle. This interpretation may now be applied.

2. A Reinterpretation Of Evidence: The Deficient Study Of ‘Australian Fascism’

The historiography of the Australian Right is extensive on post-Great War movements, and has debated whether an Australian fascism appeared during the Depression years. Although some researchers have affirmed that fascism made a nationally-specific appearance, this Thesis would argue a revisionist position: there was no organised Australian fascism in the period of the 1920’s and through the Depression. Certainly, Australia witnessed an active paramilitary Right with potential for fascistization. An intellectual house-cleaning which differentiates fascism from the Right will establish a framework for further assessment.

Payne has described three faces of authoritarian nationalism:

During the early 20th Century, there emerged a cluster of new rightist and conservative authoritarian forces ... that rejected moderate 19th century conservatism and simple old fashioned reaction in favour of a more technically advanced and proficient authoritarian system ... These forces may in turn be divided into elements of the radical right ... and the more conservative right[16]

Blinkhorn confirmed the survival of Payne’s typologies after the Great War; regrettably, he blurred fascism and the ‘radical right’:

... there existed in inter-war Europe at the very least a subjective distinction between the radical right as represented by in the main, fascism and national socialism, and the conservative right as represented by constitutional conservatism and the various strands of conservative authoritarianism closely linked to it.[17]

It would be inevitable some would confuse the various anti-liberal, anti-marxist, authoritarian movements as expressions of a single phenomenon. Clarity may be obtained by paradigm:

Table 1.1 Political-Ideological Paradigm[18]

Fascism	Extreme Right	Conservative Right
1. Vitalism, Nietzscheanism or militant Christianity - a New Man	1. Traditionalism tempered by modern science	1. Primacy of religion of a structured type
2. Modernization	2. Stabilization and gradualism	2. Order
3. Cross-class populist mobilization	3. Middle-class organization: rural and professional support	3. Military, police, bureaucratic, high-bourgeois, aristocratic
4. Assault upon class base of society	4. Reliance upon old elites with admixture of ‘new-men’	4. Preservation of power and privilege of established elites
5. New State: collectivist	5. Corporatist order. Downgrading of Parliament	5. Preservation of Constitutional order or royal-military dictatorship
6. Partymilitia-cadres which downgrades military or politicizes it	6. Paramilitarization, esp. reliance upon ex-soldiers’ organizations	6. Precedence of Army with occasional paramilitarization

In a conclusion apposite to this typology, Linz argued:

... the ideological ambiguities of fascism as an anti-movement and its incorporation of a variety of ideological strands into ... a new synthesis made it possible for ... competitors to include fascist ideas and organizational patterns into their own political appeal ... [19]

Fascist movements and regimes also contributed through practice to subsequent academic confusion. Sternhell added:

... thrown to the right by their hatred of class politics which their organic nationalism rejected, the fascists found themselves as a logical result of the conflict with the Left, driven into opportunist alliances which distorted their image, diluted their radicalism and reinforced their anti-marxism to the detriment of their nationalist collectivism ... [their] ... revolutionary potential largely nullified by the left-right dichotomy in which they were trapped ... [20]

Nonetheless, fascism often broke these constraints. This Thesis would adopt therefore Payne’s paradigm for many of the forces of the inter-war Right:[21]

Table 1.2 Three Faces of Authoritarian Nationalism

Country	Fascists	Extreme Right	Conservative Right
Germany	NSDAP	Hugenburg, Papen, Stahlhelm	Hindenburg, Brüning, Schleicher, Wirtrschaftpartei, etc.
Italy	PNF	ANI	Sonnino, Salandra
Austria	NSDAP	Heimwehren	Christian Socials, Fatherland Front
Belgium	late Rex, late VNV, Légion Nationale	Verdinaso	early Rex, early VNV
Estonia		Veterans’ League	Päts
Finland	Lapua/KL	Acad.Karelia Society	Mannerheim?
France	Faisceau; Francistes, PPF, RNP	AF, Jeunesses Pat., Solidarité Française	Croix de Feu; Vichy
Hungary	Arrow Cross, National Socialists	“Right Radicals”	Horthy, National Union Party
Japan	Nat’l Soc/some “Imperial Way”	“Japanists”, some “Control”	Konoye/RAA
Latvia	Thunder Cross		Ulmanis
Lithuania	Iron Wolf	Tautininkai	Smetona
Mexico	Silver Shirts	Cristeros/Sinarquistas	PRI
Poland	Falanga, OZN	National Radicals	Pilsudski, BBWR
Portugal	Nat’l Syndicalists	Integralists	Salazar/UN
Romania	Iron Guard	National Christians	Carolists, Manoilescu
South Africa	Gray Shirts	Ossewa-Brandwag	National Union
Spain	Falange	Carlists, Renovación Espanola	CEDA
Yugoslavia	Ustasa, Zbor	Orjuna	Alexander, Stojadinovic

Upon Payne’s logic, this Thesis imposes a paradigm upon the Australian Right:

Table 1.3 The Inter-War Australian Right

Fascist	Extreme Right	Conservative Right
<with strict qualification: potential more than actuality in some cases> Individual ideological fascists[22] The Publicist magazine/Australia First Movement Literary Radical Nationalists Lang Labor Party	New Guard-Centre Party Citizens’ League of South Australia Social Credit Movement Some members of the League of National Security/All For Australia League	Constitutional Association; British Empire Union; King and Empire Alliance; Essential Service Volunteers; Citizens’ Defence Brigade; Queensland Vigilantes; X Force; White Army; Australian Fascists; Old Guard; League of National Security; Sane Democracy League; Who’s For Australia League; All For Australia League; Emergency Committee of South Australia; Khaki Legion; Civic Patrol.

(Ethnic-based fascist organizations excluded.)

Surprisingly, Australian researchers have neither developed a paradigmatic classification of the inter-war Right nor updated analysis through the developing scholarship of fascism.

There is an overwhelming case that much of the inter-war Right was derivative not only of Australia’s subservience to British-Imperial cultural-political norms and requirements, but because of direct implantation of methods to safeguard the Anglo-Australian connection from bolshevistic destabilization. The strike-breaking, essential-services’ protective groups and secret militias of the 1920’s were directly inspired by organisations like the ‘British Fascisti’. Thurlow wrote of these ‘Fascisti’:

... a supposed imitation of Mussolini’s example ... in reality it was little more than ‘conservatism with knobs on’ ... Its immediate origins have to be seen as mainly an ultra-conservative response to the social consequences of the Great War ... it was almost exclusively ... supporters of the ‘Die Hard Conservatives’ ... The diehards were opposed to the rise of a socialist Labor Party and militant trades unionism which they saw as a revolutionary threat ... the British Fascisti proved ... a defence force and strike-breaking organization.[23]

The British Fascisti were creatures also of British security services which were keen to develop a national emergency reserve.[24] The Australian Fascists also formed under Fascisti inspiration.[25] The White Guard, X Force and Citizens’ Defence Brigade had a similar purpose. Secret armed organizations were planned from 1917 and appeared immediately after the War, but the nervous imperial-capitalism of the 1920’s preferred to operate through ‘reserve’ forces and munificently funded patriotic-Constitutional leagues and returned servicemen’s organizations.

This changed in the Depression, because of de facto challenges to Empire from Jack Lang’s Labor populism and the revolutionary Left. The Right responded through the Old Guard (The Country), the League of National Security (White Army) and the Emergency Committee of South Australia. These were ‘high bourgeois’ forces ready to employ underhanded or violent tactics.

Andrew Moore detected certain “loyalist Anglo-Australians”, the “descendants of the original colonial families” of New South Wales, became fearful of the “immoral” masses and organized the underground Old Guard, “a part of the armoury of state power”, which was “difficult to disentangle from the Defence department.”[26]

An incipient fascism was discerned:

... it existed wherever the ruling classes of embattled liberal democracies saw their economic and social order tumbling and socialist enthusiasms arising among the masses.[27]

Moore gave the Old Guard a fascist dimension contending their ‘country-mindedness’ derived of similar impulses to “Bismarckian notions of blood and soil”, and reasoned Australian rural capitalists approximated those “East Elbian landowners” who helped Hitler to power. Unfortunately, this point overlooked Hitler’s deceptive opportunism, the wartime political expropriation of the Junkers, and the actual theoretical origins of the Blood and Soil myth.[28]

A more careful analysis would have concluded that the Old Guard was a component of a state akin to a “limited authoritarian” regime (Horthy’s Hungary, Pilsudski’s Poland, and Latvia of the mid-1930’s) or a “conservative or praetorian bureaucratic national regime” (Spain 1923-30 and Vargas’s Brazil).[29] Relevant to this assessment, Australian conservatives stabilized the crisis within parliamentary rule buttressed by paramilitaries and secret police. Effective parties like the Nationalist Party/United Australia Party (UAP) carried on a legitimizing electoral organization, while the Imperial Intelligence and military arrangements were other vital elements of the regime-portrait. Moreover, the ideological underpinnings of the system have received attention and here too the analysis points away from fascism:

These belief systems did not draw any inspiration from Mussolini and Italian fascism but rather sprang from the dominant local ideology, Anglo-Australian conservatism.[30]

Whenever Fascism was considered worthy of emulation, it was viewed as militant conservatism. The conservative ascendency was bonded to ideological hegemony.

Cathcart argued that conservatism partitioned the political discourse into sacred/profane, constitutional/unconstitutional, educated and sane/ignorant and mad, loyal citizen/disloyal un-Australian, British/foreign-bolshevik. These values ‘spoke’ for the war dead and proclaimed the survivors living embodiments of patriotism.[31] This discourse was not dubbed ‘fascism’. Rather, the argument appreciated conservatism’s mastery of a number of key symbols which asserted Empire, patriarchy and old capital as essential characteristics of citizenship.[32]

Such traditionalist ideology was hardly congruent with a palingenetic populist ultra-nationalism. Hitherto, researchers have not considered that such views are analogous to those of Payne’s Conservative Right category. If the connection had been made, the dynamics of conservatism’s relationship with other Depression paramilitaries of the Extreme Right would have become clearer.

The energetic resolve of conservatives such as Brudenell White and Thomas Blamey, who commanded the Victorian White Army, and the conspirators who planned a putsch against Lang, conditioned the political interrelationship with Extreme Right forces. In South Australia also, “the extent of the overreaction displayed”, led to a commitment “to employ all the means ... legislation, the police and special constables and the weight of public opinion.”[33] The Emergency Committee of South Australia (1931-2) oversaw measures to protect State supplies and public utilities against bolshevik subversion, constructing also “a coalition of rightist forces ... in the Australia-wide attack on Labor governments and the labour movement.”[34]

The “high-bourgeoisie” desired order not mass mobilization and, if necessary, a constitutional putsch not revolution. They feared ‘experiment’ and surely recoiled at the German ‘revolution of nihilism’ which smashed into that country’s class base in the late 1930’s, overturning military elites, purging conservatives and intensifying a planned economy.[35] This unorganized Second Revolution[36] (and subsequent German Nazi and Italian Fascist practice) would have been perceived as bolshevism. Conservatives had always sought the preservation of a comprador Anglo-Australian capitalism and their resistance (as below) to late 1930’s Social Credit and Australia First nationalist challenges may further imply a longstanding imperviousness to fascist or Extreme Right ideologies.

These men were repelled also by the Depression years’ rabble-rousing adventurism of the New Guard, the Citizens’ League of South Australia and fractious members of the All For Australia League and League of National Security. It is here some Australian academic opinion locates fascism, undoubtedly a more plausible proposition than hanging it on the Old Guard/White Army.

Such groups drew upon the pool of the discontented, those alienated by parliamentary weakness to deal with the Depression. Some All For Australia League (AFAL) activists questioned democracy and favoured government by commission[37] Although AFAL favoured electoral action through the Nationalist Party/UAP, its agitation in New South Wales lent lustre to the New Guard, the most studied supposed representation of Australian fascism. Moore observed the New Guard was:

... not part of a co-ordinated class mobilization nor did it constitute a fraction or power bloc within the ruling class ... it was merely unwanted and scorned ... [38]

Colonel Eric Campbell’s New Guard, founded in February 1931, presented a picture of second-string leaders, middle and lower middle class urban membership, street violence and hysterical anti-socialist propaganda. Amos accepted that description, and after noting the New Guard’s independence of the Old Guard and the State and its readiness to rebel for Constitutional liberty, totalled the sum to fascism.[39] Campbell’s adoption of fascist rituals, his 1933 tour of Germany and Italy and meeting with Sir Oswald Mosley, was grist to his mill.

Darlington agreed also, arguing the New Guard expressed the fascist minimum: a British racial definition of Australian nationality; respect for authority, King and Empire; employed violence against the Left and the labour movement; recruited ex-soldiers; would rebel to protect the Constitution from socialism. Darlington concluded the Guard:

... did not even have to go through the period of bogus radicalism to win supporters from the Left ... the Right once aroused was sufficient to render such expediencies unnecessary[40]

Darlington added, that “this variety of world fascism”[41] favoured Nordicism, a Nazi shibboleth.[42] This marxian interpretation had fascism as an agent of repression not to be promoted into a regime, and disposable with the passing of crisis.

Moore’s attribution of ruling class scorn can fit this model, although he was more cautious, ascribing fascism to Campbell’s New Guard only in its later period[43] after the dismissal of Lang’s government, when embittered by the callous disregard shown to it by the new UAP government and Old Guard, Campbell freely ‘adopted’ fascism. Some researchers observed that this ‘turn’ towards “fascist theatrics” did not appeal to all members, many of whom felt the Guard’s purpose had been achieved with the crushing of “communist” Lang - and they returned to the conservative fold. The failure of Campbell’s Centre Party in the 1935 NSW elections, represented fascism’s inability to establish support.[44]

The cautioning research of Payne, Linz and Blinkhorn when applied to Australia would counsel for the New Guard’s placement in the Extreme Right category.

Although possessed of some independence of the ruling class it would still be connected by an umbilical chord of sentiments and purposes. Indeed, during the New Guard’s heyday (February 1931-June 1932) it never concerned itself with cultivating a cross-class membership; its name suggested a development from the Old Guard; its declaration of principles was similar to the Old Guard. In his The Rallying Point: My Story Of The New Guard, Campbell painted a convincing picture of upright loyalists fighting the socialist tiger. Campbell was defending Old Guard territory with vociferous passion.[45]

His 1934 manifesto The New Road was a programme for the protection of the imperial outpost. With an imported prince as governor-general, it would have a modern government of experts within a corporate state. The document, with its assertion of the virtue and leadership abilities of the ‘best families’ in NSW, reeked of contempt for the working class[46], revealing Campbell as no demagogic Hitler or Mussolini.

Parallel foreign examples favour this revision. First, the Austrian Heimwehr of Prince Starhemberg was a patriotic paramilitarized organization with middle-lower middle class cadres. During the Depression it employed violence against the Left. Mistrusted by the “Christian-Social” conservatives, it was absorbed (1934) into the “Fatherland Party” of the “Christian Corporate State”.[47] Second, Colonel O’Duffy’s Irish Blue Shirts arose in response to a specific crisis in Irish agricultural trade (1932-3). A substantial farmers’/ex-soldiers’ movement was constructed which clashed violently with the Left. With the crisis overcome, conservatives sought the reintegration of the Blue Shirts into the Fianna Fail party. O’Duffy carried on with a ‘Corporate State Party’ which collapsed in 1935.[48] In both cases the ‘independence’ of the Extreme Right was curtailed by conservatives who stood close to the levers of state power. With firmness and expressed common beliefs, the Extreme Right could be demobilized. The Australian cases implied a similar dynamic. Certainly, Campbell’s progressive appropriations of fascist externalia (and title) caused concern to the conservative class wary of any demagogic assault. Significantly, the Emergency Committee had previously dealt with E.D.A. Bagot’s Citizens’ League, one member quipping: “We started the Emergency Committee to control Bagot.”[49] His policy for the superseding of Parliament with government-by-commission sounded dangerous, and his 20,000 middle/lower-middle class followers made loud noises for their place in the imperial sun. When the Emergency Committee disbanded in 1932 (along with the White Army and Old Guard) it had marginalized the bumptious Bagot.[50] His movement disintegrated in 1934. Campbell also found ruling class doors closed (if indeed they were ever open) after 1932. His movement was marginalized and possessed no mass-mobilizing strategy. Regardless of Campbell’s ‘independence’, he was revealed as an expendable fireman for capitalism.

A final defence of ‘New Guard fascism’ lies in substitutionism. Alder concluded it “did fulfil all the requirements of the fascism minimum”[51] and considered it qualitatively different to Old Guard conservatism, but reasoned it idiosyncratic throughout its life:

... it differed from the essential European model in one important respect; whereas most European fascisms had very definite origins in a form of anti-Marxist socialism - national socialism - the New Guard developed out of a tradition of purely conservative pro-capitalist paramilitarism ... the fascism of the New Guard by-passed the left-fascist stage ... [of] European fascisms ... [52]

Australian exceptionalism would be remarkable since fascism was a radical mobilization against the ruling classes of countries where it appeared, and the processes of populist agitation were mandatory. Further: fascism cannot be reduced to paramilitarism either. In any case, Australian paramilitaries did not reflect the nihilist violence either of the ‘heralds of the SA’, the Freikorps[53] - or the Italian Squadristi. Alder’s position was also undermined by an insight into Labor’s populist-nationalism as:

... a potential basis for the development of an Australian fascism from orthodox ... national socialist-origins. New Guard imperial nationalism is significant ... [because] ... it failed to consider, or at least considered unfavourably, a peculiarly Australian fascist ideological heritage.[54]

Such a native-fascist discourse was never an option. The New Guard had fought Labor populism. To assault finance and monopoly capitalism would have meant a break from Empire, rejection of a ‘service’ role, rejection of the formula, ‘proletarian-nationalism-equals-bolshevism’ and a struggle against the very system it defended. It would have been as decisive a metamorphosis as Hitler’s break from anti-Entente generals, secret Reichwehrs and Bavarian conservatives in 1923-4. The monarchist New Guard with its ‘loyal’ support for deflation, sane finance, ‘National Debt non-repudiation’ and the virtues of British constitutionalism was essentially too bourgeois for fascism.

Moore’s ultimate attempt at substitutionism:

... imperial patriotism was in large measure the Australian equivalent to the ultra-nationalism that fired the fascist experience in Europe in the 1930’s[55] -

requires that we accept that a philosophy of submission, centred on loyalty to an entity with counter-interests to Australian independence may be equated with the ideology of palingenesis. While Souter has argued that Australians developed before 1914, a dualistic concept of nationality[56], and defended this syncretism aggressively, it is clear that inter-War imperial-patriotism posed a block to fascist mobilization. It provided the image of strength in Australia that was not congruent with the situation, for example, in Germany, where a Treaty of Versailles dictated weakness had invited ‘National Revolution’ from the Right.

Imperial-patriotism offered a ‘counter-myth’ to ultra-nationalism, the illusion of participation in an Anglo-Saxon commonwealth. It articulated fear, the bourgeois desire to cling to conformist principle, to possess what was already held, against bolshevist robbery. It promised good citizenship not a New Man. Whether in its White Army, Old Guard, New Guard or Citizens’ League guises, imperial patriotism cannot be understood as substituting for the essential fascist minimum.

Moore has labelled the ‘country-minded’ Old Guard “proto-fascist”[57] and with his division between ‘early’ and ‘late’ New Guard, located his “mature form of Australian fascism”[58] accordingly. Both the early New Guard and the Old Guard signified mature imperial-patriotism, each proto-fascist by that definition, whatever their differences. Upon Moore’s marxian position there was no reason for a fascist experiment after 1932 as the political crisis of capitalism had passed. Further theoretical agonizing over the relationship of the ruling class, imperial ideology, and fascist organization, can be resolved if the New Guard is fitted into the Extreme Right category. Finally, therefore, the various cases for the existence of Australian fascism, can be dismissed.

The period 1919-1935 matured the Anglo-Australian comprador class, its ‘bunyip’ sobriquet removed and its modernization achieved. Its 1920’s reserve-forces were augmented and streamlined into sizeable, clandestine forces generally concealed from public view.

Conservatives had set the agenda of Australian politics and imposed an imperial-myth as ideological-hegemonic justification. In defusing Left and Labor populist challenges, conservatives revealed flexibility. They worked behind Constitutionalist educational-propaganda groups, such as the Sane Democracy League which preached industrial peace and union democracy;[59] they allowed the Extreme Right to organize an aggressive array of ‘reformers’ and paramilitaries, but successfully demobilized them into the UAP regime. The conservatives developed the military-naval intelligence apparatus (which lurked behind the secret armies of the 1920’s[60] and 1930’s) and the Commonwealth Investigation Branch until it was a power capable of extensive internal surveillance[61], linked through to British security services, a major modernizing achievement pregnant with future dealings between the State and the Right. The inter-war ruling class may have trembled at the prospect of a ‘communist revolution’ but it did not court fascism. Judging from its firmness towards the Extreme Right, we may safely conclude it would have crushed or truncated organized fascism just as Rumanian conservatives did to the Iron Guard. It became by increments, a class possessed of confidence and power.

3. THE Irrelevance Of ‘Intrusive Fascism’ To The Australian Right

Australia hosted the activities of foreign fascists. From 1920, there was an increase in Italian immigration. After 1922, Consular officials established branches of the Fascist Party. One senior Fascist described the purpose of Fascist organization:

... [Italians] ... should become models of industriousness and patriotism to the eyes of foreigners ... not by renouncing Italian citizenship and by becoming assimilated into the Australian environment which was a shameful decision, but by conserving their national heritage.[62]

Given public preoccupations with subversion and preservation of British identity, separatism appeared stereotypically Southern-European. Migrant clubs and fascist education facilities incited frictions.[63] No substantial contacts eventuated between Italian Fascists and the Australian Right, and the odd overlap (such as the career of Sir Raphael Cilento)[64] suggests little cross-fertilization.

British Fascism also appeared, with sections of both the ‘British Fascists’ and Mosley’s British Union of Fascists being founded. Such groups achieved nothing and contributed little to the native scene.[65]

German Nazis excited more interest through the energetic labours of German Consul, Dr Rudolf Asmis. A few hundred ‘Reichsdeutsch’ enjoyed membership of the NSDAP and sub-organizations[66] but the exclusivity of Nazi ‘racial ideology’ and a narrowly focussed ethnic separatism made contact with the Australian Right difficult and probably encouraged a local suspicion.[67] The size of the Australian-German population precluded a structure like the ‘German-American Bund’, which despite its separatism did operate a cynical policy towards the American Right.[68] Yet no effort at inculcating Anglophobia amongst Australians was made either.

The German Nazi view of Australia was essentially imperial and colonial; expressed with asperity, it would have shocked the neo-nazis described in later chapters.[69] Australia was seen as a “graveyard’ of German blood, the assimilationist pull of the “Anglo-Saxons” too strong. The intention was to preserve German enclaves.[70] During wartime, the German government was advised to attempt rescue of German stock from a Japanese occupation, either by Tasmanian resettlement or transfer to the Russian Eastern Territories.[71] Other Australians would be left to the mercy of Occupation. In the final days of his Reich, Hitler expressed his contempt for Australia.[72]

Some other fascistic groups achieved implantation - such as Russian groups connected to the emigre diaspora - but their ethnic power base was weaker than German or Italian efforts.[73]

The internationally-connected fascist groups were considered as national security dangers from the late 1930’s, and surveillance was imposed, pending mass war-time internments.[74] Howsoever sections of the native Right perceived the fascist phenomenon, local offshoots provided scarce inspiration. The Right followed its own courses mapped by Australian considerations. The environment after 1945 would contrast sharply with this isolationism, with foreign anti-communists big players in the Right.

4. Proto-Fascism And Native Fascism 1890-1942

Proto-Fascism has two meanings: movements or ideologies extant prior to 1914 which were progenitors of fascism, and intellectual currents or Extreme Right forces capable of radicalization into fascism. Griffin argued:

Fascist political myth is unable to become a nucleus of extra-systemic political energies ... unless the forces of secularism and pluralism have already taken root there and given rise to either (i) currents of non-fascist ultra-nationalism which palingenetic mythopoeia can turn into components of revolutionary ideology or (ii) indigenous or foreign examples of fascism to draw on.[75]

While a substantial literature has examined Anglo-conservative paramilitarism and the activities of foreign fascists, there has been less discussion of the trends conducive to the weaker phenomenon - native fascism.[76]

Although Australia should not be considered so exceptional that pre-1914 proto-fascism cannot be identified, caution and qualification are warranted. Australia was a colonial, derivative society developing a native-identity amidst the imperial overlay. It was ‘younger’ than Europe with the optimism of colonial societies which restricts the despairing self-criticism the palingenetic myth may pretend to cure. Nonetheless, various trends of cultural pessimism, racial and radical nationalism and ‘national’ socialism were features of Australian politics prior to 1914 which continued to fester thereafter.

One aspect of colonial optimism lends itself to ‘palingenetic mythopoeia’. Eatwell divided palingenetic mythology into two positions: national-rebirth through reference to an idealized past or the break from the present towards a new form of Nation, which renews a ‘race’, a ‘civilization’ on a ‘higher’ plane.[77] This Thesis shall identify statements of this position which could have drawn upon particular ‘optimistic’ nationalists of the 1890-1914 period.

While some fascists will be identified for the late 1930’s, Australian fascism was abortive. Caution will be exercised in affixing labels to 1930’s political phenomena. Generally, proto-fascism is being discussed, not the delivered article. This Thesis observes the weakness of fascism flowed from the problem inherent in its mobilization: the ‘fight for space’ within a conservative order with defined opposition.

(a) Cultural Pessimism

German pessimism was described by Stern as a retaliation against modernity from older social groups stressed by the effects of industrialization, proletarianization, materialism and positivism. With Moeller van den Bruck came the call for a youth revolution to revise bourgeois values.[78] However, Moeller van den Bruck represented subsequently a 1920’s school of German fascism noted for its cult of technological modernity and hatred of the reactionary past.[79] Sternhell observed a ‘fin de siecle’ cultural malaise that spawned vitalist philosophy, ‘Nietzscheanism’, and then, revolutionary syndicalism and integral-nationalism. A chance at ‘renewal’ might follow the apocalypse of the European bourgeois order.[80] The ‘pessimist’ Oswald Spengler opined:

Men are tired to disgust of money economy. They hope for salvation from somewhere ... for some real thing of honour and chivalry ... [81]

Spengler’s Nietzschean despair of bourgeois nihilism foretold a reinvigoration of European power by Caesarist politics, the overflow of Money by Blood.[82]

Nietzsche had his influential Australian devotees. Spanning the period 1900-1940 were Norman Lindsay and William Baylebridge. Lindsay’s Nietzscheanism led to the Olympian-aristocratic disdain of the artist for activist politics; Baylebridge’s poetic Nietzscheanism demanded political fulfilment and finally found a home in Percy Stephensen’s nationalist movement.

Lindsay considered himself part of a constellation of Australian patriots. He drew for Frank Anstey’s labour paper, Tocsin,[83] and for Lone Hand, an ultra-nationalist offshoot of The Bulletin, edited by (Sir) Frank Fox. Lindsay painted ‘My Army, Oh My Army’ (1915), a revolutionary storming-of-the-barricades featuring the faces of Henry Lawson, Rod Quinn, Henry Boote (editor of The Worker) and A.G. Stephens of The Bulletin’s “Red Page”.[84] Lindsay did not look backwards but optimistically forwards, reasoning Australia “could become the centre of a great renaissance which would rejuvenate western culture.”[85]

The Great War’s imperialist savagry shook the destiny of the fragile nation. When chaos produced Bolshevism, Lindsay perceived the “savage” in revolt against civilization,[86] his terms similar to Lothrop Stoddard’s The Revolt Against Civilization, a work which exercised influence over the 1920’s racial concerns of The Bulletin, The Worker and the RSL.[87] Lindsay decried “the abnormal activity of the savage as expressed in the spirit of commercialism”, and he warned indifferent Australia of the challenge of the “Eastern” races.[88] Spengler’s The Hour Of Decision also addressed these themes.[89] Lindsay retained these ideas in later life. When he predicted his Australian pagan “heroic man” would be pitted in the “eternal conflict principle of the white western peoples and the yellow Asiatics”[90], he showed his lifetime seduction by Spenglerian myth. In the 1920’s and 1930’s, Lindsay directly, and through his son Jack, cultivated another Nietzschean - Stephensen - and encouraged his publishing ventures.

Stephensen managed to sum up Baylebridge’s long career:

For thirty years the poems of William Baylebridge have been eagerly sought by devotees of literary culture[91]

This Queensland philosophe drew upon ‘eternal recurrence’ to hypothesize the revitalization of Australia by a ‘New Man’:

Weary not, O ‘Ye living, that the deathless in you bring the seed of life to its richest flower. Who sleeps till his resurrection has none. Sacrifice O ‘Ye living to the resurrection![92]

Baylebridge’s dissatisfaction with the ante-bellum world appeared in “The Forward Vision”. This poem shared with The Futurist Manifesto the commitments to technology, redemptive violence, contempt for the feminine and restless dynamism, all suggestive of proto-fascism.

In 1932, Baylebridge’s poetry won Stephensen’s interest and his transition to native fascism was soon complete. Baylebridge grasped the fascist myth:

It is not because a people comes to believe that it falls into decadence; it is because it is in decay that having foresaken the once-fertile dream of its ancestors, it has not replaced this by a new dream, equally or more creatively of energy ... By exacting energy, we would exclude decadence ... [93]

Baylebridge addressed declining birth-rates, national eugenics policy and war with Asian nations, themes popular on the international Right.[94] He visualized the ANZAC fighting man the standard bearer of a State which could refine the Nation.[95] Here, Noel Macainsh suggested the ‘ideals’ of warrior-nationality and statecraft were principles similar to German ‘Conservative Revolution’.[96] Baylebridge’s reworking of Shaw’s Nietzschean Man and Superman for a critique of ‘liberal man’ was also portentious, as Shaw was a direct inspiration for Mosley’s fascism.[97]

The discursive interlinkage of Australia’s prophets of ‘anti-decadence’ addressed the fear that ‘young-Australia’ was prone to cultural lethargy and smugness, ideas which appeared in Henry Lawson.[98] The ‘problems’ of native-identity required intellectual articulation. It would be Stephensen who drew together the strands.

(b) Racial And Radical Nationalism

Nineteenth century Australian racism, inclusive of the Anti-Chinese League, miners’ riots and strike actions, has been exhaustively studied.[99] Fused with a national ideal, it “supplied an identity and ... future ... similar in form to socialism but far more palatable ...”.[100] Australian nationalism contained a:

... reaction against imperialism and the belief in the possibility of creating the good society ... [101]

Rightist visions of the Australian future appeared in tripartite division amongst: “the radicals, the middle class nativist moderates and the Anglo-Australian loyalists...”[102] The former category with its republicanism, bush-socialist references and militancy was epitomized by Lawson. His close personal relationship with The Bulletin’s nationalist-cultural propagandizing proclaimed his centrality.[103] The Bulletin’s failure to make republicans out of the moderate Australian Natives’ Association (ANA) and the radicals’ pre-Federation defeats did not mean the 1890’s would not become ‘Legend’. Lawson’s conscious mythmaking (and ultimate personal collapse) also had the substance of later palingenetic use. Failure (like the ‘failures’ of Irish Republicanism), may inspire action.

Lawson’s programme, “one of the many varieties of fascism”, [104] was redolent of the logic of populist ultra-nationalism.

Lawson believed the nation was under Asian threat: “All unprovided and unprepared the Outpost of the White”,[105] “While not five thousand miles away, the yellow millions pant for breath”.[106] It was a new nation, not a transplantation: “They think we are a careless race - a childish race and weak; They’ll know us yet in England, when the bush begins to speak”:[107] in a land of freedom: “The world shall yet be a wider world ... East and North shall the wrongs be hurled that followed us South and West.”[108] The British Empire would lose Australia, the gains of progress taken by an independent republic:

Sons of the South Arise!

Sons of the South, and do

Banish from under your bonny skies

Those old world errors and wrongs and lies

Making a hell in a Paradise

That belongs to your sons and you[109]

A socialist order fuelled by “kindled eyes all blazing bright with revolution’s heat”[110] would overcome “a base intrigue” of the Anglo “patriotic”.[111] Lawson’s nation might call upon a ‘King Of Our Republic’; “a tyrant shall uplift the Nation yet”, protecting it from enemies foreign and internal.[112] His New Man would have the “dreamy eyes” of the technocrat.[113]

C.H. Kirmess (Frank Fox) polemicized Lawson’s perils and visions in The Australian Crisis, predicting a Japanese ‘refugee invasion’ of the Northern Territory, civil disorder, the Imperial stab-in-the-back and the loss of part of the Continent to Japan. A White Guard would fight:

... hardy pioneers who wrestled nature in the arid heat ... selectors, stockmen, miners, drovers, carriers and other bushworkers who loved the uncrowded life on the borderline of civilization.[114]

It was “Aryans” versus “Turanians” in racial struggle. Kirmess described Australia:

under these congenial blue skies, a new Greece ... a more perfect Athens scorning slavery and conferring citizenship on its entire manhood and womanhood ... a precious buckle in the white girdle of progress ... [115]

His nationalism was morally-absolute, socially inclusive, and racial, which implied some affinity with integral-nationalism.[116] However, it would ‘rebirth’ Indo-European civilization as young Australia’s destiny.

The moderate Australian Natives’ Association, founded in 1871, also favoured racial-patriotism, recruiting the likes of Higgins, Deakin, Barton and Isaacs.[117] Its civic patriotism, conditional Imperialism and broad organization gave it a place in the compromise of principles at Federation. The Association’s commitment to industrial protection, immigration restriction and labour legislation helped defuse the radicals. It preached Australian Pacific intervention, naval-construction and military service.[118] The middle class structure and mass campaigning suggested loose similarities with the ‘radical rightist’ Italian Nationalist Association whose expansionist proto-fascist rhetoric forged a strong current in pre-war Italian politics.[119]

The various themes of Australian nationalism offered visions capable of intellectualization outside of the imperial ethos, a soup from which ‘palingenetic mythopoeia’ could draw inspiration and legitimization.

(c) Non-Marxist ‘National Socialism’

Marxists have criticized the labour movement for its nationalism, false-consciousness, leader-deceivers and failure to develop a socialist outlook.[120] Contemporary Left historical criticism overlooks the viability of traditional, culturally-specific models of anti-capitalism[121] and ignores or diabolizes nationalism as a medium for change.

The Labor party was inspired by American Populism. Labor would represent the productive classes not just the proletariat, and free the nation from oppressive local and international banking capital.[122] This heritage lingered long in Labor thinking. Frank Anstey declaimed:

Human bloodsuckers who risk neither life nor limb nor penny wax fat on Armageddon. They constitute the Money Power that bestrides all countries and makes all nations its slaves ... The Money Power is something more than Capitalism. It is its product but yet its master.[123]

Anstey agitated to empower the Commonwealth Bank to regulate the money supply against production.[124] A strong labour movement and party would realize a people’s state. The Commonwealth would be cooperative, repudiating the old world error of class war practised by Australia’s capitalists.

Whether the populists’ understanding of class, their concentration on financial reform rather than industrial reordering, and their abhorence of monopolist concentration and ‘parasitism’ implied an inferior and unscientific perspective compared to Marxism, perhaps more adaptive to pre-imperialist capitalism[125] - is not the point here. Rather, this ideology existed as a pervasive labour sentiment.

That populism was a component of fascism is demonstrable at a theoretical and historical level. American Populism had an organic descendent in 1930’s American fascism which shared opposition to dominant elites, speculation and monopoly. Both supported the democratization of wealth and power, arguing that sovereignty, wisdom and virtue should and do, reside in the People.[126] American Populism was defeated in the 1890’s, but Australian ‘populism’ had concrete legislative achievements as part of the ‘National Settlement’ of 1901.[127] Although revamped in the 1930’s, it had to mobilize against its own party.

Labour had faith in State-directed change. Charles Pearson prophesized the State, conquered by the people, could organize the community, to guard ‘White Australia’ for the “Aryan”.[128] Labour programmes proclaimed an enlightened nation, with its “racial purity” intact would extend the function of “State” and “Municipality” into economic management. The legendary William Spence who could not conceive of “true patriotism” as less than “racial”, and the Australian as the instinctive socialist regardless of class, advocated the extension of State control.[129]

Australian labourists stayed outside of the Second International and they were not alone. ‘National Socialist’ parties emerged in Austria-Bohemia (1900-1914). Like Labor, their programmes called for class collaborationist socialism and espoused nationalism.[130] They criticized Jewish finance. Similarly, the French ‘Yellows’ berated finance capital, favouring the extension of property ownership, patriotism, profit-sharing and plebiscitary democracy.[131] These alternatives to Marxism were complemented by an affiliate of the International - the Victorian Socialist Party (VSP) - which wavered on internationalism and eventually developed a pro-White Australia perspective.[132] VSP official, mystic poet Bernard O’Dowd, romanticized nationalism and in the World War the VSP asserted an Asian danger.[133] Other socialist fractions wavered in a similar manner. The weakness of Marxism in the socialist groups, their attachment to alternate schools of socialism, and the strong populist-nationalist atmosphere sustained by the ALP and unions suggested pre-fascist factors.

Australian socialism also possessed a latent palingenetic element, expressed most expansively by William Lane. His optimistic doctrine argued that socialism would restore “civilization”, rekindle the aesthetic beauty in man, establish a new order of moral feeling.[134] A new European racial type forged of the melting of “Latin”, “Teuton” and “Slav” would overturn colour blind capitalism. It would be done in revolutionary racial struggle against a traitor class.[135] Lane waited for a populist leader:

the incarnation of the spirit of his time ... from the burning throbbing heart of a people ... the child of the centuries, the climax of all that has gone before ... from the people and for them ... He moulds men into the shape they seek.[136]

Lane’s Australia-centric utopianism showed in his desire to create an all-class state which organized production while reforming the character of man.[137] Lane’s legacy to the labour movement was organizational, ideological - and partly legend.

Post 1918 Australian labourism did not engender a fascist variant, and found only one leader who could have moved from nationalist labourism to national socialism - Jack Lang. However, Stephensen’s contemporaneous fascist judgement argued Lang was wedded to Labor’s compromised parliamentary strategy.[138] Driven from office by conservative intrigue, Lang temporized with radicalism. His 1934 manifesto assailed the “financial anarchists” and Australia’s dependence upon the imperial trade system while calling for “planning”, National Credit and “the rehabilitation of this land we love with the spirit of a religious faith”.[139]

Other Labour leaders, such as Mosley and ‘Neo-Socialist’ Marcel Deat, broke with their parties (1930-4) upon similar rationales. Henri De Man led the Belgian Labour movement into a technocratic vision - the ‘Plan’ - finally subsuming his party into fascism in 1940.[140] However, Lang for all his bluster, de facto alliances with the Social Credit party and independency, did not mount a revolutionary challenge.[141] Lang Labor in and out of government was constrained by the State-conservative forces and Federal Labor reformist competition.

Lang’s populism lacked the shock-forces paramilitarized by his enemies. The imperial myth lured the ex-soldiers to accept the conservative appreciation of patriotism, leaving Lang’s populist-nationalism devoid of any capacity for ‘militarization’. Further, whilst Lang invoked labour traditions, he neither tried to revise the compromise of 1901, Labor’s concession to the State, exchanged for progressive enactments, nor offered a critique of Labor’s acquiescence in the rise of the conservative State and ideology.

By 1936, when Stephensen and persistent anti-British ‘Rationalist’ businessman W.J. Miles, founded The Publicist, official Labor was sliding towards social democracy, although various fractious persons and the Langites, groped for an ‘Australia First’ position.

5. Stephensen’s Fascism: ‘Australia First’ Nationalism

In mid-1935, just as Campbell’s Centre Party was dissolving, Stephensen was writing his influential The Foundations of Culture in Australia. Stephensen’s acid ate into ‘Australian Fascism’:

When the Hitler minded in Australia develop a little more self-confidence ... to seize power, the press which now tacitly encourages them ... will feel the weight of the rubber truncheon .. Fascism is a schoolboy bully armed. It has no intellectual pretensions, aims at discipline from above ... The tradition of the AIF will ... defend us ... should the nasty little plotters ever screw up the courage to the point of putting matters to the test. The ‘Heil Hitler’ buncombe which goes with Fascism will be treated in Australia with all the contempt such preposterous saluting and goosestepping deserves ... [142]

As a 1920’s confidante of D.H. Lawrence, whose experiences of the secret army were personal, Stephensen probably possessed direct reports. His tirade against their armed bourgeois authoritarianism was certainly genuine.

Significantly, Munro understood Stephensen’s ideology within the “nationalist”, “isolationist”, “Jack Lang” mould but argued he had a “distaste” for fascism and implied his interest grew through Miles’s fascistophile influence over The Publicist and quirky, personal “Germanophilia”.[143] Another historical opinion held fascism was implicit in The Foundations, and the hypothesized ‘liberal humanistic’, first and second sections (which argued for Australian cultural freedom and achievement outside British influence) were not in contradistinction to the rancorously nationalist third part, composed after Stephensen met Miles.[144]

These jarring views with their uncertain defintions of fascism can be synthesized if it is argued that Stephensen was a fascist who loathed Anglo-conservatism and who found virtue and fault with the fascist regimes. His fascism was idiosyncratically Australian whatever his philosophic references and placement within international fascism.

A comparison with British fascist A.K. Chesterton is instructive. Chesterton pilloried the authoritarianism of old elites. He was like Stephensen - a gregarious, urbane ‘rebel’, hardly possessed of the stereotypical fascist ‘authoritarian personality’ and notably also, he articulated an intense apprehension of ruling class, and national-cultural, decay.[145] Stephensen meantime criticized the illiberal and aggressive ‘British Garrison’[146] which denigrated Australian cultural independence and opened Australia to decadence derived from internationalization.[147]

Munro’s assessment that -

Stephensen was a primitive nationalist harking back to the bush ethos but he was also a sophisticated Nietzschean-Bakuninite[148]

- permits a comparison with Robert Brasillach who epitomised the French fascist intellectuals. This “anarcho-fascist” rebelled against the decadent bourgeoisie and Americanization, but retained his Gallic irrationalism.[149] A Nietzschean vanguard was anticipated in the renewal of cultural life.

These three fascist intellectuals were of the literary world. Chesterton was a ‘culture-critic’ and the others authored cultural history. Stephensen was also prolific, writing short stories and other pieces.[150] They were part of the literary-fascist array (Junger, Drieu, Celine, Pound and others) who explored to greater or lesser philosophic depth the alienated man in bourgeois society. They sought deliverance in superpersonal cathartic rebirth and argued cultural struggle was an adjunct of political action against liberalo-marxism - and ‘semitism’.

Stephensen slotted into Griffin’s category of defensive, anti-militarist, anti-imperialist fascism.[151] Stephensen’s attack upon European war-mongers,[152] the wastage of Australian lives and “Nationality” in the Great War[153] and his belief that ‘White Australia’ required no jingoistic justification,[154] fleshed out a category Griffin scarcely elaborated upon. Muirden, the first historian of “Australia First”, reasoned Stephensen’s system was a “Puzzled Patriotism” unsure of how far to pursue its nationalism (the wartime programme was not anti-British) and how to relate Australia to fascism’s war.[155] However, Stephensen’s strategy predated the wartime censorship which highlighted tactical considerations.

Essentially, Stephensen sought to profit from the clash of fascism and British imperialism with a native-fascist response to the questions of acquiring Australian independence and defending ‘White Australia’. Stephensen’s Communist Party training probably suggested a revolutionary defeatism; he anticipated British military defeat would usher in Australia First nationalism by default.[156] Stephensen’s strategy was based upon the ‘inevitability’ of the clash of arms.[157] The problem lay in the construction of a new movement sure to be constrained by a lack of political space.

The substantial radical-nationalist-socialist tradition was available and references to its myths appeared in Stephensen’s propaganda.[158] However, as observed, the 1920’s imperial-patriotism had blocked any hypothetical national socialism at that time, and generated a paramilitary underground, while those ex-soldiers corralled by the sectional Country Party were opposed in the 1930’s to the spectre of Lang-nationalism. Stephensen’s lamented

The AIF contained a very large proportion of socialists, rebels, radicals, republicans, anti-imperialists, Australia Firsters and tough lads generally. It was definitely not an Empire flag-waving army.[159]

- Yet he could hardly revive spirit in the aging veterans. Most would have considered the conservative order palatable and nationalism as much “disloyalty” as communism. Stephensen feared this reaction.[160] By the mid-1930’s, the paramilitaries had dispersed, coming to terms with the ‘United Australia’ government. Few cadre could come from such quarters.

The Publicist did condemn all sectionalism, but Labor was praised for “isolationalism”[161] and Lang Labor for residual nationalism. Lang’s The Century published some anti-war, anti-semitic and ultra-nationalist material. However, these Labor fractions were not penetrated. The few thousand issues of the monthly Publicist and radio broadcasting were limited offerings to forces who already had specific ideological-political interests.

The Social Credit movement - “birdlime for morons”[162] - had peaked in 1934, and though it continued to command activist farmers and small businessmen was, because of its inherent Anglophilic constitutionalist heritage and increasing sectarianism, unsuitable as an ultra-nationalist vehicle.

Stephensen appreciated the importance of nationalist literature in challenging imperial control at the ideological level. His influence over the Jindyworobak poets was profound as Rex Ingamell’s Conditional Culture revealed. Here, cultural localism was espoused.[163] In his search for a mobilizing mythos, Stephensen asserted the virtue of Aboriginality. He edited Xavier Herbert’s Capricornia and sought the preservation of traditional Aboriginal culture to affirm the timelessness of the seventh continent.[164] He favoured the Jindyworobaks[165] who adopted Aboriginal motif and belief in alcheringa - spirit of the place. The utilization of indigenous symbolism was not unknown to international fascism. The ‘European’ fascists of South America adopted Indianist motifs to proclaim their nativism.[166] Stephensen went further, - and cofounding an Aborigines’ Progressive Association. The new nationalism would have the old-continent rebirth the white race.[167]

The poet Ian Mudie who joined Australia First, authored palingenetic-nationalist material. He asserted the war’s rekindling of Eureka’s fires,[168] and saw the Japanese Darwin bombing as “our birth” in “blood’s cement”.[169] “Federation’s cold confusions”[170] (both Lawson and Stephensen spoke of the absurdity of seven parliaments replacing six) would be overcome by nationalism. Life and death in recurrence,[171] all classes united “past the hour when the war shall stop”[172] to drink the “Glory of the Sun” - Australian alcheringa.[173]

Neither in peace nor war could Stephensen find a cadre. He interested hundreds and unfortunately some cranks,[174] but was cut off by security fears. Stephensen’s hard Realpolitik told against him:

... the Democratic imperial nations of the Paris-London-New York axis - and these are Australia’s real enemies ... [but] ... I do not support Hitler, Mussolini or the Mikado who support themselves and have never asked for my aid ... “[175]

But he had shown deference to Hitler[176] and Japan[177] sufficient to appear treasonable - particularly when a separate peace was discussed during wartime.[178]

The State dealt harshly with the Australia First Movement which formed in October 1941. Munro suggested that a Sydney Military Intelligence plot, which involved Perth Special Branch, caused fringe Publicist subscribers manipulated by an informer, to hatch a “pro-Japanese” cabal.[179] Cottle has taken the argument further with fair speculation of a conspiracy to scapegoat AFM for actual Japanese collaborationist plots by comprador bourgeois members of the ‘Japan-Australia Society’.[180] The internment of Stephensen and other AFM members, in March 1942, terminated the organization. Stephensen was not a traitor, but his concession to Nazism’s ‘spiritual’ nature:

Regeneration!: ye must be born again. Hitler’s party gives this an earthly, not a heavenly meaning.[181]

- served to condemn him. The price of the New Man could only be met in the revolution of nihilism.

CONCLUSION

This Thesis has revised previous interpretations of the inter-War Australian Right particularly through its imposition of Payne’s tripartite typology for Fascism, the Extreme Right and Conservative Right. A review of the literature consequently revealed faulted conceptions of ‘Australian fascism’ and related misconceptualizations of the nature of the Conservative State’s ideology and politics. Further, through the application of new scholarship on generic fascism (Griffin, Eatwell) an alternate assessment of the pre-fascist factors inherent in Australian nationalism-labourism-populism was advanced. These pools of ultra-nationalist, racial-nationalist, cultural pessimist, non-marxist socialism and populist activism were available for Stephensen’s native-fascist experiment as myth and ideological reference. While specific reasons for the abortive character of Australia First fascism were given, the historical problems engendered by both Australia’s confused identity-relationship with the Empire and the ‘1901 compromise’ (which constrained labour) militated against Stephensen’s effort and left residual ideological and strategic confusion on the Right thereafter. The alternate nationalist tradition had challenged the State’s historical legitimacy.

The State feared any sort of independent political group or popular challenge to its values, social structure and economic underpinnings. Communist and maximalist socialism, Labour reform, Langite nationalism, New Guard ‘Extreme Right independency’, Social Credit and Australia First fascism were occasional threats and to varying degrees, and each received a response. D.H. Lawrence’s chilling words grasped a truth about the conservative State:

Out of the silver paradisical freedom untamed evil winds could come, cold like a stone hatchet murdering you. The freedom, like everything else has two sides to it. Something like a heavy reptilian hostility came off the sombre land ... It was as if the silvery freedom suddenly turned and showed the scaly back of the reptile - and the horrible jaws ... [182]

Ruthlessness was part of the State arsenal as much as ideological ‘countrymindedness’-cum-imperial-patriotism. However, with its modernization and restabilization from the mid-1930’s, some normalisation could follow, and the congealed violence of State power could be transferred gradually to the para-State organs. But the lessons of auxiliary organization remained.

The advent of war limited further challenges and security-services’ conspiracy destroyed ‘Australia First’. The war crushed foreign fascism and its odour would surround Extreme Right activism thereafter. Australian nativist-nationalism was broken with Stephensen and disappeared from the post-war Right as any significant trend. A remodelled ultra-British, constitutionalist and anti-Labor Social Credit movement, survived the war.[183] With the war reinvigorating communism, Australian conservatives had a new problem.

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[1] This ‘collection’ of theories of fascism is drawn from: Renzo De Felice, Interpretations Of Fascism, Cambridge, 1977; Stanley Payne, Fascism: Comparison And Definition, Madison, 1980; Stanley Payne, “The Concept Of Fascism”, in S. Larsen, B. Hagtvet, J. Myklebust (eds.), Who Were The Fascists? Social Roots Of European Fascism, Oslo, 1980, pp. 14-25; Gilbert. Allardyce (ed.), The Place Of Fascism In European History, Englewood Cliffs, 1971; Some of the above theories are argued by: Ernst Nolte, The Three Faces Of Fascism, London, 1966; Leon Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism In Germany, Harmsworth, 1971; Jorge Ortega Y. Gasset, The Revolt Of The Masses, London, 1961.

[2] The middle class (“petty bourgeois”) theory of fascism as a mass movement has some merit (Renzo De Felice, op.cit., pp. 97, 126-7) although it failed with the ‘working class’ Hungarian and ‘peasant’ Rumanian fascisms. The protagonists of this theory also underestimated the proletarian content of German and Italian fascism.

[3] Eugen Weber, Varieties Of Fascism, New York, 1964; S.J. Woolf (ed.), European Fascism, London, 1968. Weber and Woolf argued the character of each fascism was associated with the manner by which this synthesis was achieved.

[4] Roger Griffin, The Nature Of Fascism, London, 1993, p. 26.

[5] Roger Eatwell, Fascism: A History, London, 1995, p. 11.

[6] Zeev Sternhell, The Birth Of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion To Political Revolution, Princeton, 1994, pp. 4-5, declined to accept Nazism as a fascism because of ‘racism’. Griffin held Fascism ‘racist’ in a number of forms (Roger Griffin op.cit., p. 48); A. James Gregor, The Ideology Of Fascism: The Rationale For Totalitarianism, New York, 1969, pp. 241-281, proved the existence of a distinctive Italian Fascist ‘racist-ethnocentric’ ideology long before German influences operated. Hereafter, this Thesis accepts Nazism as generically fascist and ethnocentrism an aspect of fascism.

[7] Roger Griffin, op.cit., pp. 32-42. A typological but supportive formulation was: JuanJ. Linz, “Some Notes Toward A Comparative Study Of Fascism In Sociological-Historical Perspective”, in Walter Lacquer (ed.), Fascism: A Readers Guide, Harmondsworth, 1979, pp. 25-26: “We shall use a multidimensional typological definition of fascism ... which ... covers all the movements ... even where some dimensions might be more central to one or to the other. We define fascism as a hypernationalist, often pan-nationalist, anti-parliamentary, anti-liberal, anti-communist, populist and therefore anti-proletarian, partly anti-capitalist and anti-bourgeois, anti-clerical or at least non-clerical movement with the aim of national social integration through a single party and corporative representation not always equally emphasized ... it relied on activist cadres ready for violent action combined with electoral participation to gain power ... The ideology ... appeals for the incorporation of a national cultural tradition selectively in the new synthesis in response to new social classes, new social and economic problems and with new organizational concepts of mobilization and participation differentiate them from conservative parties ...”

[8] Zeev Sternhell, op.cit., p. 28.

[9] Alastair Hamilton, The Appeal Of Fascism: A Study Of Fascism And The Intellectuals, London, 1971; Roger Griffin (ed.), Fascism, Oxford, 1995. The latter valuable anthology also differentiates the various ‘schools’ of fascism, important to discussing diverse intellectuals.

[10] Roger Eatwell, “How To Revise History (And Influence People?) Neo-Fascist Style”, in Luciano Cheles, Robert Ferguson and Michaelina Vaughan (eds), The Far Right In Western And Eastern Europe (2nd edn), London, 1995, pp. 316-7, for Bardeche’s importance to ‘neo-fascism’.

[11] Maurice Bardeche, Qu’est ce que le fascisme?, Paris, 1970, pp. 88-89, 164.

[12] ibid. pp. 194-5. The question of ‘neo-fascism’ is discussed in Chapter Ten.

[13] Roger Eatwell, “Towards A New Model Of Generic Fascism”, Journal Of Theoretical Politics, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1990, pp. 161-194, defined central themes similar to Griffin, different ‘permutations’ which attract varied forces/individuals.

[14] ibid, p. 189, strongly implies this idea; Roger Griffin, The Nature Of Fascism, pp. 197-8.

[15] Zeev Sternhell, Neither Left Nor Right: Fascist Ideology In France, Berkeley, 1986, pp. xiv, 2-4. Sternhell’s identification of fusionary revolutionary syndicalist and integral-nationalist ideology in pre-1914 proto-fascism and this ongoing 1920’s/1930’s trend is instructive. This contrasted sharply with the Right; Roger Eatwell, “Towards A New Model Of Generic Fascism”, p. 190.

[16] Stanley Payne, Fascism: Comparison And Definition, pp. 14-15.

[17] Martin Blinkhorn, “Introduction”, in Martin Blinkhorn (ed.), Fascists And Conservatives: The Radical Right And The Establishment In 20th Century Europe, London, 1990, p. 1; Roger Griffin, The Nature Of Fascism, pp. 90-99, 120, 130, reached the same general conclusion but differentiated fascism from the ‘Radical Right’.

[18] This paradigm relies on Payne’s discussion, op.cit., pp. 14-21. For reasons of consistency elsewhere, I have altered ‘Radical Right’ to ‘Extreme Right’.

[19] Juan J. Linz, “Political Space And Fascism As A Late-Comer: Conditions Conducive To The Success And Failure Of Fascism As A Mass Movement In Inter-War Europe”, in S. Larsen, B. Hagtvet, J. Myklebust, op.cit., p. 153.

[20] Zeev Sternhell, “Fascist Ideology”, in Walter Lacquer, op.cit., p. 383.

[21] Stanley Payne, op.cit., pp. 16-17; again substitute ‘Extreme Right’ for Payne’s ‘Radical Right’.

[22] Richard Glover, “The Millionaire Professor Who Lived In A $25 Room”, Sydney Morning Herald, October 23 1989, pp. 1, 11 - an account of University of Newcastle Professor of French, Dr. Kelver Hartley who ‘converted’ to fascism at the University of Paris. He played no role in any movement.

[23] Richard Thurlow, Fascism In Britain: A History 1918-1985, London, 1987, p. 24.

[24] John Hope, “Fascism And The State In Britain: The Case Of The British Fascisti 1923-31”, Australian Journal Of Politics And History Vol. 39, No. 3, 1993, pp. 367-380.

[25] Andrew Moore, “The ‘Fascist’ Cricket Tour”, Sporting Traditions, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1991, pp. 164-174.

[26] Andrew Moore, “Send Lawyers, Guns And Money!: A Study Of Conservative Paramilitary Organizations In New South Wales 1930-32. Background And Sequel 1917-1952”, PhD Thesis, La Trobe University, 1982, pp. 9, 10, 14, 296, 331.

[27] Andrew Moore, The Secret Army And The Premier: Conservative Paramilitary Organisations In New South Wales 1930-32, Kensington, 1989, p. 11.

[28] Andrew Moore, “The Old Guard And ‘Countrymindedness’ During The Great Depression”, Journal Of Australian Studies, No. 27, 1990, p. 55; James Pool and Suzanne Pool, Who Financed Hitler? The Secret Funding Of Hitler’s Rise To Power, London, 1978, pp. 415-491; Max Gallo, The Night Of Long Knives: Hitler’s Purge Of Roehm And The SA Brownshirts, London, 1974, pp. 282-4, 293-4; Anna Bramwell, Blood And Soil: Richard Darre And Hitler’s Green Party, Abbotsbrook, 1985, pp. 1-12, 201-208.

[29] Stanley Payne, A History Of Fascism 1914-1945, Madison, 1995, p. 408. These typologies imply - limited authoritarianism: “preserved certain liberal and parliamentary forms”, conservative-praetorian-bureaucratism: “semi-pluralist eshewing major new efforts of mobilisation”.

[30] Roslyn Pesman Cooper, “‘We Want A Mussolini’: Views Of Fascist Italy In Australia”, The Australian Journal Of Politics And History”, Vol. 39, No. 3, 1993, p. 352.

[31] Michael Cathcart, Defending The National Tuckshop: Australia’s Secret Army Intrigue Of 1931, Fitzroy, 1988, pp. 140-150.

[32] ibid., p. 77.

[33] R.N. Wait, “Reactions To Demonstrations And Riots In Adelaide 1928-1932”, MA. Thesis, University of Adelaide, 1973, pp. 212-213.

[34] John Lonie, “Conservatism And Class In South Australia During The Depression Years 1929-34”, MA Thesis, University of Adelaide, 1973, p. 240.

[35] Hermann Rauschning, Revolution Of Nihilism: Warning To The West, New York, 1939. This aspect of Rauschning’s work remains fully arguable. I do not neglect the fact some conservatives in Australia feared Russian Communism more than German National Socialism.

[36] David Schoenbaum, Hitler’s Social Revolution: Class And Status In Nazi Germany, New York, 1967, pp. xx, 48, 193, 199, 245.

[37] John McCarthy, “‘All For Australia’: Some Right Wing Responses To The Depression In New South Wales 1929-32”, Journal Of The Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 57, Pt. 2, January 1971, pp. 160-171.

[38] Andrew Moore, The Secret Army, p. 162; the same might be said of the AFAL/LNS members who advocated authoritarian government: Peter Loveday, “Anti Political Political Thought”, in R. Cooksey (ed.), The Great Depression In Australia, Canberra, 1970, pp. 121-135.

[39] Keith Amos, The New Guard Movement 1931-35, Melbourne, 1976, pp. 100-114.

[40] Robert Darlington, “The Social Position And Ideology Of The New Guard”, BA(Hons) Thesis, Macquarie University, 1975, p. 6.

[41] ibid., p. 4.

[42] Robert Darlington, Eric Campbell And The New Guard, Kenthurst, 1983, p. 31 (This reference could have been drawn from Lothrop Stoddart’s work. See Section 4).

[43] Andrew Moore, The Right Road?: A History Of Right-Wing Politics In Australia, Melbourne, 1995, p. 45.

[44] S. Reid, “The New Guard In Decline: Eric Campbell And The Centre Party”, BA(Hons) Thesis, Macquarie University, 1980, pp. 20, 34-5, 38, 44, 51-62. Also: Keith Richmond, “The New Road To Salvation: Eric Campbell And The Centre Party”, Journal Of The Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 66, Pt. 3, December 1980, pp. 184-195.

[45] Eric Campbell, The Rallying Point: My Story Of The New Guard, Melbourne, 1965, passim. Campbell also mentioned the joking adoption of fascist ritual 1931-2 (ibid., pp. 137)-8) While an ‘afterthought’ Campbell also considered he was conservative rather than fascist, op.cit., p. 129. Also: Phyllis Mitchell, “Australian Patriots: A Study Of The New Guard”, Australian Economic History Review, Vol. 9, No. 2, September 1969, pp. 156-179, asserted the Guard was throughout a creature of Anglo-Australian conservatism.

[46] Eric Campbell, The New Road, Sydney, 1934.

[47] Jill Lewis, “Conservatives And Fascists In Austria”, in Martin Blinkhorn (ed.), op.cit., pp. 98-117. The heavily working class NSDAP opposed both Heimwehr and State.

[48] Maurice Manning, “The Irish Experience: The Blue Shirts”, in S. Larsen, B. Hagtvet, J. Myklebust (eds.), op.cit., pp. 557-567; Mike Cronin, “The Blue Shirt Movement 1932-5: Ireland’s Fascists?”, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 30, No. 2, April 1995, pp. 317, 320, 329-30.

[49] John Lonie, op.cit., p. 248.

[50] Stephen James, “The Big Hand Of Service: The Citizens’ League Of South Australia 1930-34”, BA(Hons) Thesis, University of Melbourne, 1982, pp. 75-78.

[51] Baron Alder, “More Dangerous Than All The Communists In Australia: A Study Of The Ideology Of The New Guard Movement”, BA(Hons) Thesis, University of Sydney, 1991, pp. 61-62.

[52] ibid. pp. 2-3, 35.

[53] Robert C. Waite, Vanguard Of Nazism: The Free Corps Movement In Post-War Germany, 1918-1923, New York, 1969, pp. 22-30, 40-57, for the philosophy of this movement. Keith Amos, op.cit., p. 110, considered New Guard paramilitarism and the Freikorps political soldiers similar phenomena, which was a source of error.

[54] Baron Alder, op.cit., p. 56.

[55] Andrew Moore, The Right Road?, p. 18.

[56] Gavin Souter, Lion And Kangaroo 1901-1919: The Rise Of A Nation, Sydney, 1978, pp. 109-134, 155-167, 307-8.

[57] Andrew Moore, “The ‘Fascist’ Cricket Tour”, p. 171.

[58] ibid., p. 164. Moore also wrote: “ ... (it) ... failed to develop a thoroughgoing anti-capitalist critique. It was thus never a Nationalist Socialist formation ... “ (The Right Road?, p. 45), showing he also differentiated ‘Fascism’ and ‘National Socialism’, upon the erroneous basis of ‘anti-capitalism’.

[59] Chris Priday, “Sane Democracy In New South Wales 1920-1940”, BA(Hons) Thesis, Macquarie University, 1975, pp. 5, 12, 15, 22.

[60] Andrew Moore, “Guns Across The Yarra: Secret Armies And The 1923 Melbourne Police Strike”, in Australian Society For The Study Of Labour History, What Rough Beast And Social Order In Australian History, Sydney, 1982, pp. 220-233, for links between ‘prominent citizens’, Intelligence, secret reserve forces.

[61] Frank Cain, The Origins Of Political Surveillance In Australia, Melbourne, 1983, pp. 89-91, 188-227.

[62] Gianfranco Cresciani, Fascism, Anti-Fascism And Italians In Australia, Canberra, 1980, p. 26.

[63] Ross Laurie, “‘Not A Matter Of Taste But A Sound Racial Instinct’: Race Relations In Australia In The 1920s. Racial Ideology And The Popular Press”, MA Thesis, Griffith University, 1989, pp. 63-70.

[64] AA CRS A6119/2 Item 229 (Sir Raphael Cilento).

[65] AA CRS D1915 Item SA 19070 (British Union Of Fascists And Australian Fascist Movement).

[66] John Perkins, “The Swastika Down Under: Nazi Activities In Australia 1933-39”, Journal Of Contemporary History, Vol. 26, 1991, p. 112; G. Kinne, “Nazi Strategems And Their Effects On Germans In Australia Up To 1945”, Journal Of The Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 66, Pt. 1, June 1980, p. 6.

[67] Jurgen Tampke and Colin Doxford, Australia Willkommen, Kensington, 1990, pp. 228-230 records Asmis’s minor dealings with Colonel Campbell, some ‘Australia Firsters’ and others. Also: John Perkins, loc.cit., pp. 114-5.

[68] Sander A. Diamond, The Nazi Movement In The United States 1924-42, Ithaca, 1974, pp. 165-76, 193-7, 315-323.

[69] Neo-nazis have denied the facts of German Nazi policy towards Australia. See: Peter Coleman, letter, undated. The author refers to conversation with neo-nazis in Chapters Six and Ten. John Perkins, “An Old Style Imperialist As National Socialist: Consul-General Dr. Rudolf Asmis (1879-1945?)”, in John Milfull (ed.), The Attractions Of Fascism: Social Psychology And Aesthetics Of The ‘Triumph Of The Right’, New York, 1990, pp. 293, 297, 300.

[70] Tim Burmeister, “National Socialism In Australia 1933-39”, BA(Hons) Thesis, Melbourne University, 1981, pp. 34, 36-37.

[71] John Perkins, “Dr Rudolf Asmis And The ‘Rescue Of Deutschtum’ In Australia In the 1930s”, Journal Of The Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 73, Pt. 4, April 1988, pp. 307-309.

[72] Francois Genoud (ed.), The Testament Of Adolf Hitler: The Hitler-Bormann Documents February-April 1945 (2nd edition), London, 1962, p. 55.

[73] Professor John Perkins, University of New South Wales, discussion with author partly concerning Russian fascism, February 1996. Further inquiry for this Thesis was not warranted.

[74] Frank Cain, op.cit., pp. 258-266.

[75] Roger Griffin, The Nature Of Fascism, p. 208; also confirmed by Stanley Payne, A History Of Fascism 1914-1945, pp. 487-490, who refers to ‘national’ socialist and ultra-nationalist outbreaks prior to fascist organization.

[76] Baron Alder, op.cit., pp. 2, 3, 35, 56; Humphrey McQueen, A New Britannia: An Argument Concerning The Social Origins Of Australian Radicalism And Nationalism, Ringwood, 1970, pp. 101-116; Andrew Moore, The Right Road?, p. 4 on racist Australian socialism, p. 11 redirects his attention to British-derived conservatism; the analysis of Percy Stephensen’s fascism is defective or incomplete (as below).

[77] Roger Eatwell, “Towards A New Model Of Generic Fascism”, pp. 172-3.

[78] Fritz Stern, The Politics Of Cultural Despair: The Rise Of The German Ideology, Berkeley, 1961, pp. xvi, 31, 61, 118, 178, 194, 224-6.

[79] Roger Griffin (ed.), Fascism, pp. 105-6.

[80] Zeen Sternhell, “The Ideology Of Fascism”, in Walter Lacquer (ed.), op.cit., pp. 325-406.

[81] Oswald Spengler, The Decline Of The West Vol. 2, New York, 1939, p. 464.

[82] ibid., pp. 450-508.

[83] Brian Nugent, “Frank Anstey In Victorian Politics”, MA(Hons) Thesis, University of New England, 1973, pp. 107-8. Tocsin also published Henry Lawson and Bernand O’Dowd.

[84] Jane Bloomfield, conversation with author, 1997. An expert on Lindsay, she described this illustration as a cover for a Lawson volume. The ‘connection’ would have implied some sort of political-cultural vanguardism.

[85] John Hetherington, Norman Lindsay: The Embattled Olympian, Melbourne, 1973, p. 106.

[86] Norman Lindsay, Creative Effort: An Essay In Affirmation, London, 1924, pp. 71, 45-47; Norman Lindsay, The Inevitable Future, University of Sydney RB, pp. 22, 25.

[87] Lothrop Stoddard, The Revolt Against Civilization, London, 1922, had patrician disdain (i.e. non-fascist) of the lower classes but his racial anti-bolshevik views had influence. Ross Laurie, op.cit., pp. 45, 66-70.

[88] Norman Lindsay, The Inevitable Future, pp. 22, 37.

[89] Oswald Spengler, The Hour Of Decision: Part One German And World Historical Revolution, London, 1961, pp. 3, 60-64, 81, 170, 176, 202-204, 230.

[90] Norman Lindsay, The Scribblings Of An Idle Mind, MSS, Springwood, 1964, pp. 93, 162-4.

[91] P.R. Stephensen “This Vital Flesh”, The Publicist, No. 44, February 1 1940, p. 4.

[92] William Baylebridge, “Life’s Testament vii”, in This Vital Flesh: Memorial Edition, Sydney, 1961, p. 56.

[93] William Baylebridge, “New Nationalism”, ibid., p. 148.

[94] Oswald Spengler, The Hour Of Decision, pp. 222-4; Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard New Order 1940-44, London, 1972, pp. 165-8, for the birth rates obsession.

[95] William Baylebridge, An ANZAC Muster, Sydney, 1922, passim.

[96] Noel Macainsh, Nietzsche In Australia: A Literary Inquiry Into A Nationalistic Ideology, Munich, 1975, pp. 107-110, 133-4.

[97] ibid., pp. 111-114; Richard Thurlow, op.cit., pp. 18-19, 43, 156, for Mosley’s debt to Shaw. For Nietzsche’s influence on various ‘schools’ of German fascism, see: Steven E. Ascheim, The Nietzsche Legacy In Germany 1890-1990, Berkeley, 1992, pp. 192-200. Nietzsche has a continuing influence on European ‘neo-fascism’: “La Religion De L’Europe”, Elements, No. 36, Autumn 1980, pp. 5-20; “Nietzsche Ou Socrates?” Elements, No. 45, Spring 1983, pp. 15-20. Elements is the influential journal of the ‘Nouvelle Droit’.

[98] Henry Lawson, “Australian Peril”, A Fantasy Of Man: Henry Lawson Complete Works 1901-1922, Sydney, 1984, pp. 245-6.

[99] For negative criticism of Australian racial activism: Raymond Evans, Kay Saunders, Kathryn Cronin, Race Relations In Colonial Queensland: A History Of Exclusion, Exploitation And Extermination, Brisbane 1988; Andrew Markus, Fear And Hatred: Purifying Australia And California 1850-1901, Sydney, 1979.

[100] David Lovell, “Australian Socialism To 1917; A Study Of The Relations Between Socialism And Nationalism”, Australian Journal Of Politics And History, Vol. 40, Special Issue 1994, p. 152.

[101] Robin Gollan, Radical And Working-Class Politics: A Study Of Eastern Australia, Melbourne, p. 112.

[102] C.S. Blackton, “Australian Nationality And Nationalism 1850-1900”, Historical Studies Australia And New Zealand, No. 36, May 1961, p. 352.

[103] Alisa G. Zainudin, “The Bulletin And Australian Nationalism”, MA Thesis, Canberra University College, 1953.

[104] Humphrey McQueen, op.cit., p. 104.

[105] Henry Lawson, “For Australia”, op.cit., pp. 244-5.

[106] Henry Lawson, “To Be Amused”, op.cit., pp. 269-270.

[107] Henry Lawson, “When The Bush Begins To Speak”, A Campfire Yarn: Henry Lawson Collected Works 1885-1900, Sydney, 1984, p. 215.

[108] Henry Lawson, “In The Days When The World Was Wide”, ibid., pp. 388-9.

[109] Henry Lawson, “A Song Of Our Republic”, ibid., p. 39.

[110] Henry Lawson, “Faces In The Street”, ibid., pp. 48-50.

[111] Henry Lawson, The Patriotic League”, ibid., pp. 150-1.

[112] Henry Lawson, “The King Of Our Republic”, A Fantasy Of Man, p. 490.

[113] Henry Lawson, “Australian Engineers”, ibid., p. 228.

[114] C.H. Kirmess, The Australian Crisis, Sydney, 1909, p. 149.

[115] ibid., pp. 180, 313, 335.

[116] Peter Alter, Nationalism (2nd Edition), London, 1994, pp. 26-29, for a definition of Integral-Nationalism.

[117] Carlotta Ellis, “Why Does The ALP Support The White Australia Policy?” MA Thesis, University of Melbourne, 1950, pp. 35-6.

[118] Charles S. Blackton, “Australian Nationality And Nativism: The Australian Natives’ Association”, The Journal Of Modern History, Vol. XXX, No. 1, March 1958, pp. 37-46; C.W.K. Hammer, “The Australian Natives’ Association’s Part In Australian Nationalism 1871-1901”, Australian National University Historical Journal, No. 4, October 1967, pp. 38-44.

[119] Alexander J. De Grand, The Italian Nationalist Association And The Rise Of Fascism, Lincoln, 1978, pp. 2, 5, 13, 18, 51.

[120] Verity Burgmann, “Reactionaries And Racists: Australian Socialists And The Problem Of Racism 1887-1917”, PhD Thesis, Australian National University, 1980, pp. 6, 7, 20, 38, 92.

[121] David Howell, A Lost Left: Three Studies In Socialism And Nationalism, Manchester 1986; particularly Connolly’s Irish strategy, pp. 11, 31-38, McLean’s appreciation of unique Scottish social forms, p. 216.

[122] Peter Love, “Labor And The Money Power 1890-1950: A Study Of Australian Labor Populism”, MA Thesis, LaTrobe University, 1980, pp. 3-6, 10-11, 263.

[123] Frank Anstey, The Kingdom Of Shylock, Melbourne, 1917, p. 2.

[124] Frank Anstey, Facts And Theories Of Finance, Melbourne, 1930.

[125] V.I. Lenin, Imperialism The Highest Stage Of Capitalism, Peking, 1969, pp. 31-72, stated the importance of finance capital to capitalist organization. Oddly this area has been ignored as a focus of analysis and propaganda by the Left - leaving theories of finance capital to the Right.

[126] Victor Ferkiss, “Populist Influences On American Fascism”, Western Political Quarterly, June 1957, pp. 350-70; Victor Ferkiss, “Ezra Pound And American Fascism”, Journal Of Politics, Vol. 17, May 1956, pp. 174-95; Morris Schonbach, “Native Fascism During The 1930’s And 1940’s; A Study Of Its Roots, Its Growth, Its Decline”, PhD Thesis, University of California, 1958.

[127] Ray Markey, “Populist Politics”, in Ann Curthoys and Andrew Markus (eds.), Who Are Our Enemies? Racism And The Working Class In Australia, Neutral Bay, 1978, p. 78.

[128] Charles H. Pearson, National Life And Character: A Forecast, London, 1894, pp. 29, 31-47, 91-2, 191.

[129] William G. Spence, Australia’s Awakening: Thirty Years In The Life Of An Australian Agitator, Sydney, 1907, pp. 587-596. For Spence’s political career: Carol Lansbury, “William Guthrie Spence”, Labour History, No. 13. November 1967, pp. 3-10.

[130] Andrew Gladding Whiteside, Austrian National Socialism Before 1918, The Hague, 1962, pp. 88-89, 100-101, 106-7.

[131] George L. Mosse, Masses And Man: Nationalist And Fascist Perceptions Of Reality, New York, 1980, pp. 119-136. The term ‘National Socialist’ first appeared in France. Weber, op.cit., pp. 12-13.

[132] Geoffrey C. Hewitt, “A History Of The Victorian Socialist Party 1906-1932”, MA Thesis, LaTrobe University, 1974, pp. 66, 220.

[133] Graeme Osborne, “A Socialist Dilemma”, in Anne Curthoys and Andrew Markus (eds), op.cit., pp. 121-6; Verity Burgmann, op.cit., pp. 166-71.

[134] William Lane, The Working Man’s Paradise, Sydney, 1980, pp. 114-117; William Lane, “The Creed Of Humanity”, The Worker, No. 2, April 1890, p. 2.

[135] William Lane, White Or Yellow? A Story Of Race War 1908, Brisbane, 1985.

[136] William Lane, “The Editorial Mill”, The Worker, Vol. 1, No. 3, May 1890, p. 1.

[137] William Lane, “Labour In Politics”, The Worker, September 1890, p. 2.

[138] P.R. Stephensen, “Towards The Formation Of An Australia First Party: A Twelve Point Policy”, The Publicist, No. 29, November 1938, p. 7; P.R. Stephensen, “Queen Victoria Is Dead”, The Publicist, No. 8, February 1937, p. 6.

[139] Jack Lang, Why I Fight, Sydney, 1934, pp. Preface, 219, 235-238, 278, 351.

[140] Alain de Benoist, “L’Autre Visage Du Socialisme”, Elements, No. 42, June-July 1982, pp. 44-5.

[141] For an overview of confluence of the ideas of Money Power - National Credit And Social Credit see, Baiba Berzins, “Douglas Credit And The ALP”, Labour History, No. 17, 1977, pp. 148-160; M.F. Watts, “The Labour Party Cannot Rule”, The Publicist, October 1940, pp. 8-13 for Lang: “might have been Australia’s heaven-sent leader” broken by ‘Labor’s ossification’ 1914-1940.

[142] P.R. Stephensen, The Foundations Of Culture In Australia : An Essay Towards National Self-Respect, Gordon, 1936, pp. 127, 132.

[143] Craig Munro, Inky Stephensen: Wild Man Of Letters, St. Lucia, 1992 , pp.116-7, 187-9.

[144] Brenton Doecke, “P.R. Stephensen, Fascism”, Westerly, No. 2, Winter 1993, p. 20.

[145] David Baker, Ideology Of Obsession: A.K. Chesterton And British Fascism, London, 1995, pp. 10-11, 76, 91, 140-1.

[146] P.R. Stephensen, “Wanted: An Australian Debunker”, The Publicist, No. 18, December 1 1937, pp. 3-11.

[147] P.R. Stephensen, “Colonial Culture: Symptoms, Causes, Prevention, Cure”, The Publicist, No. 39, September 1 1939, pp. 10-13. This included ‘Hollywood Americanization: P.R. Stephensen, “Experiments In Australianity”, The Publicist, No. 2, August 1 1936, pp. 3-8.

[148] Craig Munro, op.cit., p. 186. For a biased account but rewarding exposition of Stephensen’s political an intellectual achievement: Eric Stephensen, P.R. (Inky) Stephensen: Brief Biographical Memorandum, Eltham, 1981.

[149] William R. Tucker, The Fascist Ego: A Political Biography Of Robert Brasillach, Berkeley, 1975, pp. 5, 31, 148, 159-160.

[150] Eric Stephensen, P.R. Stephensen Bibliography, Eltham, 1981.

[151] Roger Griffin, The Nature Of Fascism, pp. 48-9.

[152] P.R. Stephensen, “Experiments In Australianity III”, The Publicist, No. 3, September 1 1936, pp. 3-8.

[153] P.R. Stephensen, “The Great War On The Australian Front”, The Publicist, No. 11, May 1 1937, pp. 11-17.

[154] P.R. Stephensen, “Spirit Of The Land: The Basis Of Australia’s Resurgence”, The Publicist, No. 25, July 1 1938, pp. 3-8; P.R. Stephensen, The Foundations, pp. 161-3, 190.

[155] Bruce Muirden, The Puzzled Patriots: The Story Of The Australia First Movement, Melbourne, 1968, pp. 35-38.

[156]P.R. Stephensen, “Quo Vadis? The Basic Australian Concept”, The Publicist, No. 22, April 1 1938, pp. 3-8.

[157] P.R. Stephensen, The Foundations, pp. 155-7.

[158] P.R. Stephensen, “Our Story In 15 Decades: A Brief Survey Of Australian History”, The Publicist, No. 19, January 1 1938, pp. 16-19; P.R. Stephensen, The Foundations, p. 183: Stephensen lamented the loss of Labor ideals. He criticised Labor’s lack of doctrinal elaboration: P.R. Stephensen, “Evatt On Holman: The Permutations Of An Australian Labour Leader”, The Publicist, No. 52, October 1 1940, pp. 3-7.

[159] P.R. Stephensen, “Experiments In Australianity VI”, The Publicist, No. 7, January 1 1937, p. 4.

[160] P.R. Stephensen, The Foundations, pp. 145-8, 180-1, 184.

[161] P.R. Stephensen, “The Polskis”, The Publicist, No. 27, September 1 1938, pp. 8-9.

[162] P.R. Stephensen, “Towards The Formation Of An Australia First Party”, The Publicist, No. 43, January 1 1940, p. 7.

[163] Rex Ingamells and Ian Tilbrook, Conditional Culture, Adelaide, 1938, passim.

[164] “Capricornia: The Aboriginal Question”, The Publicist, No. 17, November 1 1937, p. 5; “Citizens’ Rights For Aborigines”, The Publicist, No. 19, January 1 1938, pp. 5-7.

[165] P.R. Stephensen, “The Jindyworobaks”, The Publicist, No. 63, September 1 1941, pp. 12-13; Rex Ingamells, “National Unity”, The Publicist, No. 64, October 1 1941, pp. 11-12.

[166] Alistair Hennessy, “Fascism And Populism In Latin America”, in Walter Lacquer (ed.), op.cit., pp. 298-9; Mario Sznajder, “A Case Of Non-European Fascism: Chilean National Socialism In The 1930s”, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 28, No. 2, April 1993, pp. 281-2.

[167] William Baylebridge, “New Nationalism”, op.cit., p. 156; P.R. Stephensen, The Foundations, p. 90.

[168] Ian Mudie, “Cause For Song”, This Is Australia, Adelaide, 1942, p. 100.

[169] Ian Mudie, “Awakeners”, ibid., p. 85.

[170] Ian Mudie, “Pioneers”, ibid., p. 89.

[171] Ian Mudie, “Sons”, ibid., p. 94.

[172] Ian Mudie, “The Rolling Of The Drums”, ibid., p. 60.

[173] Ian Mudie, “Glory Of The Sun”, ibid., p. 80.

[174] See Alexander Rud Mills, “Religion And Politics”, The Publicist, No. 43, January 1 1940, pp. 8-9; Mills’ writings pioneered ‘Odinism’, a U.S. neo-nazi sect that spanned the period from the 1960's to the 1980's; Thomas Potts Graham was an anti-semite and later a neo-nazi activist in various Australian groups 1960-1988. The author met Graham at the Sydney Domain (1986).

[175] P.R. Stephensen, “Could Australia Be Neutral In A World War: A Light Spar With C. Hartley Gratten: What’s The Matter With Him?, The Publicist, No. 23, May 1 1938, p. 5.

[176] “Hitler’s Speech: 30 January 1939”, The Publicist, No. 37, July 1 1939, pp. 15-16, was tacit support for German perspectives on ‘peace’; P.R. Stephensen, “War! What For?” The Publicist, No. 36, June 1 1939, pp. 6-10.

[177] P.R. Stephensen, “Australia’s Japanic Panic”, The Publicist, No. 34, April 1 1939, pp. 3-7.

[178] Andrew Cottle, “The Brisbane Line: A Reappraisal”, PhD Thesis, Macquarie University, 1991, pp. 87, 331-2; Cottle also dubbed Stephensen a “Japanophile”, p. 336, which was excessive.

[179] Craig Munro, op.cit., pp. 217-8, 233-6.

[180] Andrew Cottle, op.cit., pp. 148-9, 181.

[181] P.R. Stephensen, “Spirit Of The Land”, loc.cit., p. 8.

[182] D.H. Lawrence, Kangaroo, Harmondsworth, 1986, p. 385.

[183] James Guthrie, Our Sham Democracy: Or The Majority Vote Racket, Hobart, 1946, passim, for an expression of the ‘tamed’ Social Credit philosophy. Guthrie became prominent in the League Of Rights. See also, Eric D. Butler, The Truth About Social Credit, Melbourne, 1945, for an attack on financial dictatorship, the “work-State” and Labor nationalization.