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

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

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

Around the world, far-right political parties and influencers are fomenting fear of a racial Other – often coded as Muslim – and those not living “traditional” lives. The choice to demarcate racism by a religious label is fitting: it is a movement where ethnonationalism is coded by a dominant religion. The Christian Nationalists of America mean “white” when they battle for a “European” and “Christian” America.(1)

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

Another designer is John O’Sullivan who is one of the key connections between Australian right-wing politics and media into the Orbán sphere of influence. Tony Abbott, Alexander Downer and The Australian’s Greg Sheridan are the most notable Australian figures in reactionary Budapest. 

In his debate, Trump expressed mutual admiration for illiberal Viktor Orbán when asked to name a world leader who admired him.

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

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

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

John Anderson’s YouTube channel, with 633 000 subscribers, hosts his interview with fellow ARC Advisory Council member, Spectator columnist Douglas Murray, where the latter expounds his rampant Islamophobic ideology. Murray was a keynote speaker at 2023’s London NatCon conference. The Anderson interview has been viewed over a million times.

John Anderson there re-invokes the shameful “clash of civilisations” trope that asserts a fundamental incompatibility between the (Christian) West and the Muslim world. He asserts here “the great clash…between the fundamental values of the West and radical Islam in particular.” Anderson describes “Waves and waves and waves of immigrants” problematic because “some of them do not share our values at all.”  Murray corrects him to say “many.” The “barbarians,” Anderson quotes, “have got through the gate and are in our midst.”(2)  Murray claims that many immigrants hate their host country after they “broke in” illegally, and spend their time trying to undermine it. For those who “do not love” their new nation, Murray declares, if they won’t go, “we will make [them] go” because, “We cannot live with these people.”

Donald Trump tweeted his intent to commence “remigration” if he wins in November. This is an ethnic cleansing term he has taken from the European far right.

John Anderson expounds the benefits of “civilisational Christianity” as our “wellspring.”

Typically for this re-invigorating of the post 9/11 “war on terror” mindset and rhetoric, Anderson celebrates Murray’s “moral courage.” NatCon conduit The Australian recommenced the use of the term “moral cowardice” after the 7/10 to describe any support for Palestinian wellbeing. The Albanese government’s shamefully tepid support for Palestinian safety was so characterised by Peta Credlin for example. (“Penny Wong’s Israel speech reveals Labor’s moral cowardice” 11/4/24).

Douglas Murray declares that the war on Gaza is “the civilised world’s war.”

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

As a result, non-compliant women are a key target. Women must, according to this worldview, absent themselves from the civic space and return to churning out babies without access to reproductive rights. Australians would be foolish to trust that this aspect of the project is not on the game-plan for our own politics. The op/ed pages of The Australian feature regular columns dedicated to celebrating traditional roles for (most) women. The woman Peta Credlin believes will “lead the [Victorian or national Liberal] party one day,” former MP Moira Deeming, promotes her anti-trans views but does not boast of her staunch anti-abortion positions.

Some Republicans, much further down the path of this trajectory than their Australian partners, have begun to discuss ending access to contraception, to no-fault divorce and even changing the franchise to a family vote where the father of the house votes for his wife as well as for his children.

Whether Dutton’s campaign against Palestinian refugees reflected a shared investment in NatCon politics or merely rhymed with it is a question that remains unanswered. NatCon’s local and international figures, however, are dedicated to making sure that they build an Australian right wing bloc that promotes its principles and its bigotries.

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

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

NatCon is the pseudo-intellectual body that brings the fascistic politics of the transnational Right to the “conservative” thinkers, politicians and money. The interconnections with other similarly-driven conferences are overt. Conservative Political Action Conferences (CPAC) and Liz Truss’s PopCon are examples. Alongside ARC, these are efforts to find a name for the radical right politics that is marketable, particularly as a form of conservatism, which they have long ceased to be.

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

The preeminent local Atlas junktank, the Centre for Independent Studies, has its annual Consilium conference listed for 24-26 October. It continues to promote the nuclear furphy.

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

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

Jordan Peterson, manosphere influencer and religious evangelist, is also attending the Australian conference. He promoted the British NatCon event in 2023. Like Truss, who seems to feel that “nationalist” is not an adjective that will sit well in the British scene, he has been part of devising his own NatCon-shaped organisation as a co-founder of ARC. The third co-founder, Baroness Philippa Stroud, represents the Atlas Network-affiliated Legatum Institute.

These events happen out of the mainstream. The ARC event is invitation only with no website. Most Australians do not read The Australian, missing the constant NatCon politics in its op/ed pages. We cannot afford to ignore the attempts to make this ugly politics central to Australian “conservatism.” Continuing to allow the term “conservative” to be applied to the politicians and thought leaders espousing it enables the radicalising of formerly conservative voters into fascistic political positions.

We have seen in Springfield, Ohio, just as in the recent riots in the UK that violence and bloodshed can follow this kind of race-baiting political gambit. Healing the divisions created is a monumental task.

Footnote:

1. It is not the first time that “Whiteness” has been seen more as a religious notion than an empirically-based category.
2. Anderson declares in a section of the interview dedicated to a “coherent immigration policy” that “We have large numbers of barbarians within our gates,” and immediately segues to the “situation in the Middle East.” It appears that he means Muslims particularly in this depiction of Islam.