Seizing the opportunity: how the Australian far-right milieu uses the pandemic to push its nationalist and anti-globalist grand narratives.
The pandemic crisis has dominated our conversations over the past few months, and many of us have taken our views and concerns to our preferred online social media platforms. Unsurprisingly, people who hold more radical or extreme political views have done the same.
Dr Mario Peucker
As a group of researchers at Victoria University and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), we analysed online activities across a range of far-right social media spaces, including Facebook, Twitter and alt-tech niche platforms, such as gab. Our analysis of 32 Australian far-right accounts on Facebook showed a significant increase in posting activities in March and April 2020, which was due to the high volume of posts related to coronavirus. We counted a total of 1,535 posts related to the virus and the pandemic between 1 January and 12 May 2020; this amounts to almost 22 per cent of all posts on these far-right Facebook accounts, which made it the most salient topic this year, surpassing other much discussed issues such as immigration, Islam or climate change (in the context of the bushfire crisis).
An additional analysis of 16 Australian far-right Twitter accounts confirmed that COVID-19 was the dominant topic with a total of 2,573 tweets related to the pandemic between 1 January and 12 May 2020, which constitute more than half of all 5,144 tweets on these accounts (Graph 1). The online hype seems to have hit a high in late March (when social distancing measures were announced by the Commonwealth government), and far-right posting activities have since started to slow down, a little bit on Facebook and a lot on Twitter. On the far-right dominated platform gab, the recently created subgroup ‘Wuflu Bioweapon’ has also seen slowly declining numbers of subscribed members in May.
Graph 1: Number of tweets (far-right Twitter accounts): 1 Jan – 12 May 2020
Source: ISD
Notwithstanding the recent decline in numbers, various far-right groups have been mobilising extensively around this public health crisis – as they have done previously with many other events that captured public interest, most recently the devastating bushfires. ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste’, as Winston Churchill once said. The public debate around COVID-19 afforded new discursive opportunities. Using such opportunities has been central to the mobilisation strategies of vast sections of Australia’s complex and multifaceted far-right milieu, as previous research has shown. If everyone talks about the virus, its whereabouts and the government’s crisis management, so do people at the far-right end of the political spectrum, giving it their own specific ideological spin.
But what ideological spin? How do you incorporate a global pandemic into a nationalistic, anti-egalitarian messaging?
Let’s step back for a moment: When we speak of ‘the far-right’ or ‘right-wing extremism’, we are using labels that attempt to capture a multitude of often very different (ethno-)nationalist and explicitly anti-egalitarian groups, networks and more or less loosely affiliated individuals. Despite some shared basic ideologies, they all pursue their specific agendas and goals and are sometimes in fierce disagreement and competition with each other. Despite this lack of internal unity, some public debates have elicited a rather homogenous response from across the far-right milieu. This was the case, for example, when some mainstream media whipped up public fears and moral panic around allegedly ‘African gang’ crimes in 2018-2019, or during the debate around marriage equality in 2017, and more recently during the latest bushfire crisis.
When the debate around the coronavirus pandemic unfolded earlier this year, different actors within the far-right milieu responded in a less unified way. Initially, there was collective confusion in their diffuse networks, and the internal incoherence resulted in significant divergences in the way various far-right actors tried to incorporate the pandemic into their messaging. However, as the debates progressed, some narratives have become more dominant within these online spaces, which occasionally also spilled into in the offline world (e.g. during a number of ‘anti-lock-down’ protests).
There is the obvious reaction: A virus that allegedly started in China is an opportunity to push anti-Chinese and anti-Asian racism. This is nothing new within Australia’s far-right (and it has been part of Australia’s long history of ‘Yellow Peril’ racism from the mid-1800s to Pauline Hanson’s political campaigns in 1990s and beyond). Anti-Chinese racism had become more prevalent within the far-right already prior to the pandemic as more radical (and extremist) groups have started to dominate online spaces that used to be in the firm grip of anti-Islam groups such as Reclaim Australia in the mid-2010s. The pandemic has been used as an opportunity to reinforce anti-Chinese and anti-Asian agitation across the far-right milieu – and additional confirmation has been drawn from the prompts of prominent political leaders such as US President Trump, who insisted on calling Coronavirus the ‘Chinese virus’. Our analysis confirms the salience of this kind of racism across a range of far-right online space and social media accounts, both on mainstream and more alt-tech niche platforms. This has also been widely reported in the media (for example here). A recently published position paper by the expert NGO, All Together Now, which monitors right-wing extremism online, comes to the same conclusion.
This racist messaging across a range of far-right accounts and online platforms was to be expected, but what our analysis also suggests is that anti-Chinese tropes have often been directed at the Chinese Communist regime and to a seemingly lesser extent at Chinese people. This resonates with a general shift within far-right milieus towards attacking ‘systems’ and institutions more than the individuals: Minorities such as Muslims, people of African descent, and now especially people of Chinese or Asian appearance are still extensively vilified, denigrated and often de-humanised, but this is increasingly done with a much bigger enemy in mind. Here, these minorities are often regarded merely as the symptom of a globalist ‘Cultural Marxist’ system, which allegedly brought them to Australia in the first place (a similar argument was pushed at the far-right rally in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda in January 2019 against African-Australians). It has been a salient view within far-right online spaces that this ‘system’ encompasses global elites and agencies such as the United Nations, and currently especially the WHO, but also its national ‘tentacles’, most importantly the Australian governments and the political elite more broadly, mainstream media, and universities.
Post 2: gab (April 2020)
Yeah, never seen this before. Gonna laugh when some idiot Centrist says they fought for Australia so we can all be free, but then he walks one too many steps from his driveway onto the street and the police jumps on him and arrests him because he didn’t comply with Social Distancing rules. These cunts will be taken away after all this ends, and when locked up, they will comply with every order from the local Commissar because we are all in this together.
These institutions have been at the centre of attention of online messaging in far-right milieus for some time, and the pandemic has provided new opportunities to mobilise around this profound hatred and rejection of these global and national agencies (what the alt-right in the US would typically refer to as the ‘deep state’).
Post 1: 4 chan /pol/ (April 2020)
This pandemic is nothing but a lie and it will be pushed as much as necessary to get total control.
Our analysis of online activities revealed countless tirades against the WHO and anti-government messaging that goes beyond criticism of their crisis management or general mistrust towards the political leadership. Many posts fundamentally reject the legitimacy of the government and its response to the pandemic, positioning a supposedly dictatorial, tyrannic government in opposition to the will of the Australian people. Central themes within this anti-government trope have been, for example, the rejection of state surveillance (e.g. COVID safe app), accusations of ‘total control of the people (Post 1), and opposition to power overreach of governments and the police i enforcing the social distancing measures (Post 2).[1]
This alleged globalist system of secretive elites, typically referred to as the New World Order (or NWO), is presented as the antitheses to the proud, strong and independent ‘White’ nation that Australia used to be – what Taggart called the ideological ‘heartland’. The alleged threat by a globalist elite has evolved into a grand narrative in recent years helping bind the divergent far-right milieu in Australia together. The global pandemic is now an ideal opportunity to push these conspiracy fantasies, which are often saturated with anti-Semitic tropes of a global Jewish elite that rules the word (Post 3).
Post 3: gab (April 2020):
Shut up and get vaccinated all you goyim
Our qualitative social media analysis highlights not only the centrality but also the versatility of this grand narrative within far-right online spaces. The conviction that secretive global forces – and the local institutions they control, such as government, mainstream media and universities – seek to deprive Australians of their freedom and national sovereignty, serves as a general frame that allows a range of conspiracy narratives to be attached to it. These include, most prominently, claims of an alleged vaccination agenda of the WHO and Bill Gates’s plan to microchip the global population, or the spread of the virus via 5G and the alleged government plan to spy on its people. Insisting on the accuracy of alternative sources (which are supposedly not controlled by the globalist elite), such convictions can create the illusion of a seemingly coherent bigger picture: For those who believe in it, ‘it all makes sense’. And those who try to prove them wrong, such as scientists or journalists, are regularly discredited as being ‘brainwashed’ or corrupt foot soldiers of the Marxist globalist elite. Hence, their attempts to argue against the conspiration theories basically only confirm the grand narrative.
Such paranoid thinking may sound obscure to many, but a recent Essential poll found that around one in eight Australians share these views around 5G and Bill Gates’s involvement and a forced vaccination agenda. These fear-driven beliefs offer mobilisation and recruitment opportunities for far-right groups as they are tapping into relatively large, previously less politicised segments of the population. At the same time, the convergence between far-right messaging around the pandemic and the concerns of significant numbers of people outside the far-right milieu (from ‘Yoga mums’ to an Australian celebrity chef) has been used within the far-right to reject the extremism label and to claim they speak for ‘ordinary Australians’. This has been an opportunity not seen in a long time, possibly not since the moral panic around jihadist terrorism in the mid-2010s.
Post 4: Facebook (March 2020)
We have warned you…if we had focussed on our own nation and protected own people instead of globalisation, we would not be in this terrible mess now
Our analysis further indicates that, once we cut through the cacophony of far-right online messaging around the coronavirus, this grand narrative of powerful and secretive globalist elites is typically accompanied by a second key agenda: nationalism. Nationalism has been a defining component of far-right ideologies worldwide, and it has also been incorporated in many posts dealing with the pandemic. The following Facebook post (Post 4) captures both grand narratives, and exemplifies how many within the far-right regard nationalism as the solution to the ills of ‘globalism’.
Nationalism means different things to different people, also within Australia’s amorphous far-right milieu (which has led to sometimes fierce infighting between some groups). But despite these differences, which have also been evident in the messaging around the pandemic, there were some rather consistent threads. Not unexpectedly, one way of incorporating the pandemic into a nationalist agenda is to celebrate the closure of national borders and call for a permanent stop to immigration (Post 5).
Post 5: gab (May 2020)
Australians love it: no immigration to Australia, no one taking our jobs and houses. No one imposing on us and claiming they are better than us and thinking they own this place. The immigrants are leaving Australia now because the economy is crashing. Of course, shows where their loyalty really lies. Australians don’t want to see our borders reopened, we don’t want to see this whole Ponzi scam anymore, but we also know that the government will do everything it can to kept this scheme up and running again. What we see now is what we could have in Australia. We are committed to revive our industries and we can have the determination to become greater…
This anti-immigration and anti-diversity stance is often embedded in a message that pitches the Australian people (‘us’) against the alleged national elites, such government (Post 5), media or universities (‘them’) – which links the nationalist with the anti-globalist anti-elite narrative. The following Facebook post illustrates this ‘us vs them’ messaging particularly well (Post 6).
The public and political debate around the situation of international students during the pandemic has also reverberated within far-right social media. Here, the far-right were in agreement with the government’s position, expressed by Prime Minister’s call on international students ‘to go home’. In the context of the political debate around potentially providing financial support for international students, one post (gab), for example, reads: ‘Universities don’t pay tax, not a penny of those [international student] fees goes to the taxpayer. They [international students] grab our student places and our jobs and now want a handout. Go home’.
Post 6: Facebook (May 2020)
The establishment is upset…Spokesmen from major Australian universities and the media are banging on about the loss of international students because of the pandemic and how bad it is for Australia. Guess what…Yes, it is bad for ‘their’ Australia but it is great for ‘our’
Post 7: Facebook post
We are Nationalists, and we want to know how can it be fair that foreign countries own so much of our farmland in Australia. Does this make any sense? And what about our national sovereignty
This anti-immigration trope, together with racist and anti-diversity messaging, reflects the cultural dimension of nationalism (ethno-nationalism). But there has been a second dimension that featured very prominently in far-right messaging during the coronavirus crisis: a radical articulation of economic nationalism. Advocating against foreign landownership and for economic self-sufficiency and national sovereignty is nothing new in the Australian far-right, and it has been articulated at the neo-fascist fringes (Post 7) as much as in Pauline Hanson’s right-wing populism. Hanson’s One Nation Party formally opposes ‘full foreign ownership of Australian land and assets…We must protect our farming industry from foreign ownership’ on its official website.
What is new is the level of prominence of such ‘economic nationalist’ arguments in the wider public debate during the pandemic about the vulnerability of the Australian economy (including the university system) and its reliance on China and other foreign trade partners. The tone of the public debate overlaps, at least on the surface, with the much more radical position of many far-right groups on economic nationalism and national sovereignty, based primarily on an exclusivist nationalist agenda and less on economically sound considerations. This has been evident in the way some far-right media posts that call for Australia’s economic self-sufficient openly reject economic (‘capitalist’) arguments and underscore that ‘the cultural wellbeing of the nation’ is more important than economic growth. Hence, according to this exclusionary (ethno-)nationalist logic, even if immigration were good for the economy, it would have to be stopped to ensure the cultural wellbeing of a White Australian nation.
Although this ethno-nationalist prioritisation does not resonate with the broader public debate around building more independent national industries, far-right social media accounts have prolifically referenced mainstream sources to support their calls for Australia’s economic self-sufficiency and warn against foreign influences. These external sources include a range of media and political figures and even more progressive think tanks. (Post 8-10):
Post 8: gab (April 2020)
This economic disaster should really ring alarm bells and remind us how important it is for a nation to have self-sufficiency and secure access to resources. Senator Jim Molan just wrote an article on this in Defence Connect Australia
Post 9: gab (May 2020)
Undermining our democracy: Foreign corporate influence the Australian mining lobby
Post 10: gab (May 2020)
It is vital for Australia to have self-sufficiency if we want to recover from this pandemic
So, how do we make sense of the pandemic as a mobilisation and potential recruitment opportunity for the heterogenous far-right? Our analysis suggests that the pandemic has not added any new ideological dimensions to the far-right online. Nor has it changed the way in which public debates provide discursive opportunities for their messaging – although we found an enormous (temporary) increase in the volume of online (and some offline) activities. However, the coronavirus crisis has helped reinforce and link a range of pre-existing tropes and narratives within the two interconnected grand narratives of exclusionary ethno-nationalism and anti-globalism.
These narratives seem to fall on more fertile ground now. Many arguments and views that circulate (in some instances very prominently) in public debates and mainstream media dovetail starkly with the far-right agenda. This is probably most evident in the discussion around a more self-sufficient national economy, but also around immigration cuts, criticism of government and police power overreach. Moreover, the relatively high number of Australians who express support for the various conspiracy theories (e.g. 5G, Bill Gates, forced vaccination), while by no means all far-right sympathisers, constitute a new pool for recruitment. The nature of the few so-called anti-lock-down protests in Melbourne, Sydney and elsewhere demonstrate this blurring of the lines between ‘ordinary people’ and political far-right agitators (one of the protest organisers in Melbourne was reportedly also involved in the event where Fraser Anning was ‘egged’).
Some political leaders and mainstream media seem to – assumedly unintentionally – fuel and further legitimise far-right agendas by using arguments and terminology very common within far-right social media spaces. This ranges across the political spectrum – from Labor’s Shadow Home Affairs Minister, Kristina Keneally’s call for a rethink of Australia’s post-pandemic immigration intake (‘Australians should get a fair go & a first go at jobs’) to the op-eds in major newspapers, such as Jennifer Oriel’s piece in The Australian titled, Coronavirus: Communists and Islamists plot new world order. Regardless of the actual intent and more nuanced content behind such statements and headlines, many within the far-right milieu have celebrated these, and many more contributions in mainstream debates, while maintaining their ideological hatred towards the media and the political elite.
All this suggests that, to understand far-right mobilisation in times of crisis, it is crucial to look beyond the far-right echo chambers and examine the resonance of radical fringe ideologies within mainstream society. This is, after all, where potential new far-right recruits and sympathisers come from.
[1] All social media posts have been paraphrased for research ethical reasons and to ensure anonymity.
Mario Peucker, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Industries and Liveable Cities (ISILC), Victoria University. Mario Peucker with data and insights from ISD. CRIS Stream 4: Dynamics of Violent Extremism.