PART II:

THE FOUR FACES OF THE EXTREME RIGHT, 1975-95

CHAPTER THREE

INTRODUCTION: DEVELOPING A NEW TYPOLOGY

Chapter Two has argued that the Australian Right (1945-75) was dominated by conservative organizations, satellites of the core power bloc and faithful auxiliaries. Whether propaganda groups, or violent para-State connected structures, they functioned to preserve a conservative-capitalist system. However, the formative Extreme Right had focused upon the politics of race - which the State could not accommodate. The following discussion of the post-1975 period will show the Extreme Right’s independence of both State and para-State and describe its anti-establishment challenge.

Applying typologies after 1975 has difficulties. The nature of ‘Extreme Right’ principles and the definition of its independence are contentious. Australian research is weak and the field is besieged by inaccurate journalism and propaganda.

One 1989 journalistic survey advanced a typology based upon “hatred” - in degrees and forms - only to be joined by recent scholarship which has sought to reduce the Extreme Right to instigators and practitioners of racist ‘hate-crime’.[1] The Sydney Institute’s Dr. Gerard Henderson contrived a ‘Lunar Right’, and characterized its protectionist, racist and isolationist views, as irrational and dangerous.[2] Jewish opinion has searched for anti-semitism and with iron consistency stigmatized groups accordingly.[3] The Australia-Israel Review has refused to distinguish anti-semitism, anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel,[4] and like the American Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith Zionists, located proto-nazism on the Left and the Right and amongst various ethnic groups.[5] Nonetheless, the idea that anti-semitism is the Right’s focus has been criticized by liberal opinion.[6]

Anti-semitism has been confused with “neo-nazism”, another concept seldom defined, and applied to disparate groups.[7] It is often a pejorative term of malicious obfuscational power wielded by journalists. This Thesis argues there existed a deliberate intent to blend ‘anti-semitism’, ‘neo-nazism’ and the ‘Extreme Right’ into a propaganda picture.

This course was undertaken by David Greason whose book, I Was A Teenage Fascist, was lionized in the press, the Australia-Israel Review and on the Left.[8] While “defector” literature must be scrutinized for reliability, this work was extensively plagiarized for themes, characterization and dialogue.

The author compared Greason’s book with Cecil Sharpley’s The Great Delusion: The Autobiography Of A Communist Leader and I Was A Communist Leader.[9] Sharpley and Greason described adolescent loneliness and exaggerated mother feelings,[10] awakening from intellectual sleep in a library,[11] feeling the call of political adventure in their commitments,[12] and being chosen for higher movement
tasks by the leaders.[13] They similarly described CPA/LOR offices,[14] the desire to leave the movement yet they stay on[15] and a remarkable “dream” which affects each as he meets his nemesis.[16]

Greason also recounted in Sharpley’s terms, tales of incompetence[17] and the failed personalities attracted to the divisive Extreme Right.[18]

Greason’s plagiarism had other sources. Ray Hill’s The Other Side Of Terror: Inside Europe’s Neo-Nazi Network acclaimed by the British Searchlight magazine, was utilized for descriptions of: The Turner Diaries (as below), “Strasserism”, and international Right trends.[19] The Simon Wiesenthal endorsed work by East German neo-nazi Ingo Hasselbach - Fuhrer-Ex: Memoirs Of A Former Neo-Nazi[20] - was the likely inspiration for material on lust for an Asian prostitute,[21] fractured adolescence,[22] threats from former contacts and the life of redemption.[23] Lastly, the ultra-sectarianism of the Trotskyist ‘Spartacist League’ - revealed in “I Was A Teenage Sectarian” - provided background to be grafted upon the Extreme Right.[24]

Bluntly, the connection of Greason, Hill and Hasselbach with Jewish ‘anti-racist’ organizations, implied an international Jewish agenda to project the Extreme Right through the neo-nazi/anti-semitic prism. Greason has applied this logic and played a role in inciting the Left against the Extreme Right.[25] Care must therefore be applied in assimilating ‘information’ from Zionist sources.

Australian society since 1975 has reflected a liberal-internationalist rather than conservative ideological hegemony. Significantly, Cathcart compared his 1919-1930’s paradigm which partitioned politics into ‘pro-British’ / ‘anti-British’ with contemporary racist/anti-racist discourse.[26] Upon this dominant logic, the League Of Rights became a racist bogy and - “extreme”.[27] During the hyper-internationalist ‘Eighties, the ground occupied by the entire Right was minimal, and from the liberals’ distance, Right typologies meant nothing. There was only the murky world of ‘racism-extremism-violence-anti-semitism’.

The contemporary Extreme Right is under-researched. Peter Henderson, after concentrating upon fundamentalist Christianity as vital for Right typology,[28] has described as the basis for doctoral research, a pattern of episodic and marginal individual militancy around Right themes.[29] This program could underestimate the Extreme Right and not discern its variations. Andrew Moore’s The Right Road? advanced core postulates about the nature of the Right. It was held “more extreme than mainstream ‘conservative’ groups like the Liberal Party ... (while) the relationship ... ebbed and waned …”. It used conspiracy theory as an organizing principle and expressed various ideas of nationalism while being suspicious of liberal-democracy.[30] Although Moore noted correctly the Anglophilic nature of this ‘Right’, he did not conceptualize the inter-relationship of the conservative auxiliaries and the State nor separate the Conservative Right from the Extreme Right and explain the basis of its mobilization. Various errors and misinterpretations referred to elsewhere in the Thesis misdirected useful observations. Moore’s marxist perspective, which maintained that the State did not require “terror” to maintain capitalism - as an explanation for the Right’s failure[31] - will be challenged.

To conform to the analysis imposed in Chapter One, it was considered that the tripartite Right taxonomy should be utilized for the post-war period. Scholarship which defined contemporary European/American neo-fascism, Extreme Rightism and other Right phenomena, with all their ideological variations, advanced this logic as useful and explanative.[32]

However, concessionally there are terminological difficulties: Lacquer argued of the second and third categories:

Why use the term neo-fascism in the first place if the neo-fascists observe the democratic rules? ... what alternative terms could be used? Several have been suggested ... right-wing extremism, right-wing radicalism, radical right populism, national populism and national revolutionaries.[33]

A certain degree of classificatory inventiveness is called for. If the axis for the Australian-specific classification becomes the conflicting Anglocentric and nativist-European concepts of national identity and State legitimacy, which are bonded to differing strategic-tactical approaches and social clienteles, the new tripartite paradigm would be: Conservative Right, Extreme Right, Radical-Nationalist. If this rationale was applied into the discussion in Chapter Two, selected organizations would classify as:

Table 3.1 Australian Right Organizations 1945-1975

Conservative Right	Extreme Right	Radical-Nationalist
Citizens’ Rights Associations NSW People’s Union League Of Rights Defend Australia League Citizens For Freedom Christian Anti- Communism Crusade National Australia Association Australian Nazi ‘parties’	Immigration Control Association Australian Conservative Party White Australia Progressive Party White Australia Party W.A. Conservative Party Democratic Party	Individual ‘Nazis’ - Smith Cawthron Australian Nationalist White Workers’ Party Eureka Students’ League Radical-Nationalists

Without pre-empting the discussion of the ideology, politics and organization of the Extreme Right, selected significant groups for the contemporary period 1975-95 classify as:

Table 3.2 Australian Right Organizations 1975-1995

Conservative Right	Extreme Right	Radical-Nationalist
League Of Rights Council For A Free Australia National Flag Association National Australia Association Patriotic Lobby Constitutional Heritage Protection Society Peter Sawyer’s Inside News	Immigration Control Association Progressive Conservative Party National Front Of Australia Some Firearms Rights Groups Confederate Action Party Rural Anti-Bank Action Groups Enterprise Freedom And Family Australians Against Further Immigration	Australian National Alliance Australian National Action Australian Populist Movement National Republican Movement Australian National Vanguard Phoenix Alliance

Paradigms are heuristic and some groups present mixed features. The satellite period, with a phase of Queensland exceptionalism aside, was over and a new challenge to the internationalist State came from a protean Right in fundamentally new political circumstances.

Generally, the Conservative Right was a product of prior auxiliary status and retained loyalty to symbolic and ideological Anglo-Australian traditionalism, while avoiding violence and abstaining from electoralism. Groups formed in leagues, lobbies, associations and councils, older people predominating, to ‘educate the public’; but the conservatives came to deny the ‘legality’ of State power under the impress of the 1986 Australia Act. With the collapse of Bjelke-Petersen’s system, the satellites received independence.

Generally, the Extreme Right created electoral ‘parties’ or activist structures, engaged in physical activism and developed cadres and propaganda. Some groups radicalized conservative ideas and challenged the State as corrupt and constitutionally illegitimate, as a failure in delivering freedom and identity. This limited delegitimization of the State encouraged the Extreme Right to desire political power or challenge the State’s internationalist ideology.

The Radical-Nationalists shared Extreme Right methods and advanced others, but embraced the republican-nationalist-labour heritage. Groups denied the modern State’s historical legitimacy and expressed the palingenetic impulse. In this manner this category has replaced the ‘Fascist’ one of the pre-1945 period (although the question of neo-fascism is debated below).

This paradigm suggests the radicalization of the Right. Notedly, O’Maolain arrived at a similar tripartite position with anti-communist, ultra-conservative and extreme right categories for the international Right,[34] with fifteen broad points of policy variously shared.[35] While focusing on the Establishment-aligned Right, O’Maolain’s notice of the Extreme Right’s independence was valuable. Eatwell’s delineation of five ‘Rights’ - Reactionary Right, New Right, Liberal Right, Conservative Right, Extreme Right - certainly affirmed the Extreme Right as an independent quality.[36] Eatwell subsequently distinguished between the Extreme Right/Fascism-neo-fascism at the levels of core-myth, class substance and degree of radicalization of temper and programme.[37]

However, in the Australian case, the ideological paradigm alone was adjudged conceptually insufficient. It would not (i) accommodate neo-nazism (which combined features of each category with some curious additives), (ii) distinguish Radical Nationalism and the ‘Extreme Right’ without divorcing them completely, (iii) place within its framework new discourses like environmentalist anti-immigrationism and the radical ‘freedom-movement’ with its occasional populist ‘anti-liberal-elite’ interpretation of monarchical power.

Two foreign academic studies suggested ways to develop a typological descriptive second-paradigm. Barrett, a Canadian researcher, attempted classification:

… the fringe right is ‘moderate’ only in relation to the radical right … in this study the ‘Radical Right’ shall refer to those … racists, fascists and anti-semites and who are prepared to use violence … The fringe Right will refer to people who share the view the Tory Party is controlled by Socialists posing as conservatives, who oppose Third World immigration, foreign aid, homosexuality …[38]

His description of ‘Fringe Right’ interests could merge my Conservative Right and Extreme Right categories; his ‘Radical-Right’ loosely fits my Radical-Nationalism category. The long lists of Canadian ‘fringe’ organizations and their single-issue orientations would prove to have Australian equivalents (see Chapter Eight).

Spoonley’s New Zealand study separated the Right along petty bourgeois and working class axes, the former sprouting various populist, Social Credit and one-issue fractions and the latter engendering neo-fascist and neo-nazi groups concerned with race and identity. Spoonley’s division between neo-fascism and neo-nazism, appeared in Griffin and Payne.[39]

This collective scholarship may guide the research into the Australian case, shape the assembly of primary material and allow useful comparisons. First, the Extreme Right and Radical-Nationalists share points of convergence - anti-marxism, anti-liberalism, moral-reaffirmation, anti-immigrationism, populist democracy - and although there is a gravitational attraction upon some Extreme Right groups from the Conservative Right, the category became constant. Radical-Nationalism would represent the Extreme Right shorn of sentimental Anglophilia and legalism, able to accommodate many of its programmatic objectives within a potentially revolutionary discourse. Second, the Extreme Right can be assessed flexible with new ideas - such as environmental anti-immigrationism and the populist ‘freedom-movement’ - entering into the matrix. Third, these positions and others can reflect the availability of new formative cadres, and changes in the western (and Australian) public mood - particularly the creeping 1980’s rejection of party politics, cynicism towards liberal-elites and fear of the future - with a tendency for voters to break free of traditional alignments.[40] In this way, the Extreme Right internationally issued an anti-Establishment challenge; indeed unlike the Conservative Right, its anti-marxism was often rhetorical rather than substantive throughout the period. Since the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the implosion of the Left, the Extreme Right in all western societies has had fewer qualms in mounting an anti-Establishment challenge.[41]

With these forethoughts the tripartite paradigm may be joined by a four-face typology for the Extreme Right:

Radical-Nationalism; Neo-Nazism; Populist-Monarchism; Radical-Populism.

This Part now divides into five chapters: the ‘rebirth’ of the Extreme Right after 1975, and progressively and somewhat chronologically – the four faces of the Extreme Right.

---

[1] Lyndall Crisp, “Harvest of Hate”, The Bulletin, April 4 1989, pp. 42-47; Chris Cunneen, David Fraser and Stephen Tomsen (eds.), Faces Of Hate: Hate Crime In Australia, Annandale, 1997, pp. 1-14.

[2] Gerard Henderson, “Lunar Right Rising”, Sydney Morning Herald, The Good Weekend, April 9 1994, pp. 70-79; Gerard Henderson, “It’s Time To Muzzle The Lunar Right’s Baying”, The Australian, April 4 1989, p. 7.

[3] Jeremy Jones, “Writing About The Lunar Racist Right”, Australian Jewish News, April 14 1989, p. 4.

[4] From the effect of the arrangement of the articles: Australia-Israel Review, Vol. 13, No. 18, October 13-26 1988, pp. 6-7; Vol. 16, No. 7, May 1-14 1991, p. 7; Vol. 16, No. 12, July 10-23 1991, pp. 6-7; Michael Agursky, “The Soviet Campaign Against Zionism”, Australia-Israel Review, Vol. 12, No. 6, April 13-28 1987, p. 3; “On The Far Right”, Australia-Israel Review, Vol. 12, No. 5, March 29 - April 11 1987, p. 3.

[5] Isi Leibler, The Escalation Of Anti-Israel And Anti-Semitic Agitation, Melbourne, 1974; Arnold Forster and Benjamin R. Epstein, The New Anti-Semitism, New York, 1974; “Istanbul Synagogue Massacre”, Australia-Israel Review, Vol. 11, No. 17, September 23 - October 6 1986, p. 1; “Passion, Pride And Prejudice”, Australia-Israel Review, Vol. 17, No. 14, July 28 - August 10 1992, p. 1. An Australian Jewish Anti Defamation Commission now exists.

[6] Phillip Adams, “The Role Of The Media”, Without Prejudice, No. 8, April 1995, pp. 47-52, remarks at ‘Racism And Anti-Semitism In Contemporary Australia Conference’, Melbourne, 1994.

[7] Mark Skulley, “Clash Of Opposites In The Racist Right”, Sydney Morning Herald, January 4 1992, p. 45;

[8] David Greason, I Was A Teenage Fascist, Fitzroy, 1994. For media support: Don McDonnell, “The Accidental Fascist”, Herald-Sun News Review, July 30 1994, pp. 13-15; for the Left’s sympathetic attitude: Sean Lennon, “What Makes A Fascist?”, Green Left Weekly, October 19 1994, p. 14; Justice Marcus Einfeld, “Facing Up To Fascism”, Australia-Israel Review, 10-30 August 1994, pp. 9, 12, for a laudatory review.

[9] Cecil Herbert Sharpley, The Great Delusion: The Autobiography Of A Communist Leader, Melbourne, 1952; Cecil Herbert Sharpley, I Was A Communist Leader, Sydney, 1950.

[10] Comparisons 10-16. The Great Delusion/I Was A Teenage Fascist by page numbers: 10. (i), 2/ 5-40, 19-23, 143-148.

[11] 8/35-36, 66, 143.

[12] 9-10/40, 155, 200.

[13] 11/72.

[14] 11/40.

[15] 113-4/220, 221, 223.

[16] 119/297-8.

[17] Comparisons 17-18. I Was A Communist Leader/I Was A Teenage Fascist by page numbers: 17. 3/275.

[18] 10/223-4, 265-6, 262.

[19] Ray Hill, The Other Side Of Terror: Inside Europe’s Neo-Nazi Network, London, 1988; Hill’s postscript, pp. 291-298 with Greason’s last chapter ‘The Right True End’.

[20] Ingo Hasselbach, Fuhrer-Ex: The Memoirs Of A Former Neo-Nazi, London, 1996. This book appeared in German in 1993 suggesting a translation was provided. Greason also supported Yaron Svoray’s sensationalized account of German neo-nazis on an Australian-speaking tour in 1995. Svoray’s scare-mongering-claims, sponsored by Simon Wiesenthal Centre, were repudiated by German prosecutors.

[21] Comparisons notes 21-23. Hasselbach/Greason: 21. 176/242-3.

[22] 3-40/5-30.

[23] 356-8, 370-84/295-311.

[24] “Dawn McEwan’s Flight From Trotskyism: I Was A Teenage Sectarian”, Australasian Spartacist, No. 86, July 1981, pp. 11, 14-15: David Greason, op.cit., pp. 244-247.

[25] Sean Lennon, op.cit.; Citizens’ Electoral Councils Of Australia, Is The Anti-Defamation League Spying On You?, Melbourne, 1995. I quote this document for its newspaper-file reference only.

[26] Michael Cathcart, Defending The National Tuckshop, pp. 123-6.

[27] Paul Gardner, “Profile: The League Of Rights In Australia”, Without Prejudice, No. 3, June 1991, pp. 42-52; this view also appeared in Andrew Campbell, op.cit. (see Chapter 2).

[28] Peter Henderson, “Who’s Who In The Zoo?”, Union Issues, No. 14, Summer 1992, pp. 8-10.

[29] Peter Henderson, Letter To James Saleam, June 14 1996.

[30] Andrew Moore, The Right Road?, pp. 3-4.

[31] ibid, p. 144.

[32] Roger Griffin, The Nature Of Fascism, pp. 161-2, 170-2; Stanley Payne, A History Of Fascism, pp. 497-8.

[33] Walter Lacquer, Fascism, Oxford, 1996, pp. 7-8.

[34] C. O’Maolain, The Radical Right: A World Directory, p. vii.

[35] ibid., p. viii. See Chapter Ten, for discussion of this typology.

[36] Roger Eatwell, “The Nature Of The Right: The Right As A Variety Of Styles Of Thought”, in Roger Eatwell and Noel O’Sullivan (eds.), The Nature Of The Right: European And American Political Thought Since 1789, London, 1989, pp. 62-76.

[37] Roger Eatwell, “Towards A New Model Of Generic Fascism”, pp. 167-9, 189-90.

[38] Stanley R. Barrett, Is God A Racist? The Right-Wing In Canada, Toronto, 1987, pp. 9-10.

[39] Roger Griffin, op.cit., pp. 163-79; Stanley Payne, op.cit., pp. 498-9; Paul Spoonley, The Politics Of Nostalgia: Racism And The Extreme Right In New Zealand, pp. 147-74.

[40] Piero Ignazi, “The Silent Counter Revolution: Hypotheses On The Emergence Of Extreme Right Parties In Europe”, European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 22, Nos. 1-2, pp. 5-6; Roger Eatwell, A History Of Fascism, pp. 276-87. For Australia: Patrick O’Brien, “The Real Politics Of The Western Australian Constitution And The Executive State”, in Patrick O’Brien and Martyn Webb (eds.), The Executive State: WA Inc. And The Constitution, Perth, 1991, pp. 1-5.

[41] Robin Rodd, “The Fascist Essence Now As Then”, Arena, No. 6, 1996, pp. 25-33, a general conclusion.