by Dr. Jim Saleam in March 2018
[The text here is edited from a talk given to Victorian nationalists. We have retained the original speech-style.]
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“My speech to you today has been a long time coming. It is time the truth was told clearly on some very urgent matters.
We must state what Australian nationalism is, what the civic patriot line is, what the Alt-Right is, and what types of fetishist ideology also linger about, to confuse us beyond measure. To ‘understand’ is to permit a political movement to mobilize upon truth. There are groups about the scene right now that contend with Australia First and other nationalists for political space. We need to absorb them where we can, bloc where we can – and negate the rest. But we must do all that right.
In May 2015, I authored a major article. I said, that the new ‘patriot movement’ which had emerged out of the Reclaim Australia movement, would seek out and find the nationalist road. I thought that in particular the United Patriots Front (UPF), the most active part of this movement, would take that road. This was all a major mistake of analysis. I was very wrong.
Basically, whatever would-be nationalists came out of Reclaim Australia generally stayed locked in a half-way house between civic patriotism and nationalism. They started to think their half-way house was a fair way to operate and their ideas and practice have reflected it. They are calling it a ‘new model’, better than the ‘old’ nationalist model. Further, they started to appropriate the term ‘nationalist’ for themselves. Much more can be said about that.
‘Patriots’ did not take the nationalist road
Then, in late 2016 during the Trump electoral campaign, it became obvious that a local branch of the American phenomenon, the Alt-Right, would make its way to Australia. And it did.
Alt-Right contains many useful people and some useful adaptable ideas. Yet, of themselves, the participants were often torn between the conservative groups they had come out of and new alliances with nationalism, and then simply, between half-digested notions of a nationalist system of thought and the thorough-going nationalist road. So much so, that an attempt to hijack the Alt-Right was put in place by Liberal connected forces.
I replied to that with the devastating attack – ‘Rape House’ – which encouraged a positive reaction and many have started down the nationalist road. But they are not there yet and there are others still in their half way house.
It is time we Australia First nationalists took the lead here. We would like our political allies in Nationalist Alternative, the Australian Protectionist Party and the Eureka Youth League to join us in taking this lead. We want all these new patriotic / Alt-Right folk to become nationalists if that is possible. But this can only take place on the basis of the nationalist ideology and its politics being in command of the sales pitch.
Self-Proclaiming Means Nothing
It is easy to say that one is a nationalist. Self proclaiming does not make it so, but who is to judge? And if we Australia First nationalists set out to judge, then we could be, and some times are – accused of being sectarian, or our right to judge is simply challenged. You know the old thing: how dare you judge me?
Well, we Australia First nationalists can judge for a reason. If we have immersed ourselves in every aspect of the Australian nationalist historical tradition and placed ourselves within the modern movement of that nationalism – then we can judge others. If our leaders have participated in countless struggles over a long period of time, then they can most assuredly judge.
In that regard if I and other leading nationalists offer you an opinion on any matter, it is not just ‘a view of things’. I would say that it is more akin to an Opinion by a Senior Counsel asked to advise on criminal charges. The opinion of any long-standing nationalist is an Opinion based upon data and experience.
Nonetheless, by any standard, whomsoever says he is something, must prove it. Why take him at his word? The nationalists have earned the right to speak. Newbies must earn it.
So what is Australian Nationalism?
Australian nationalism exists outside of us as individuals or as a party. I for one am known as one of its leading theorists, but I certainly didn’t conjure it up in an alchemist’s kitchen. Nor did Alex Norwick, or Ed Azzopardi, nor the leader of NatAlt, nor a certain prominent leader of APP. Not at all. We are its servants. It commands us. We found – it.
It is not a matter of defining Australian nationalism as some sort of ultra Australian and race loyalism. That may be identitarianism. It’s a start, but just a start.
No, Australian nationalism is more. It is a heritage, a tradition, a number of sacred icons, and historical reference points, a reverence of certain historical figures and historical events, of a spiritual bonding and obviously – a mythology of race and of place.
A nationalist must believe that nationalism is a true cause. It is the cause of a unique people with singular qualities based on a European ethnicity and largely native to the soil (encapsulated by our White Australia Policy), a people who were granted a Promise by its place upon a Continent – the gift of the Workingman’s Paradise. Australian Nationalism’s modern right to act is founded upon the abrogation of that Promise by the reactionary traitor class and then, by their ultimate betrayal of White Australia.
‘Nationalist struggle began slowly again in Australia after 1966, after the betrayal of White Australia…’
This nationalism formed as a spirit in Australia’s cultural springtime around 1880, the year the great Ned Kelly was struck down. It flowed into the great movement of radical nationalism amongst our writers and thinkers and it had an expression in the original labour movement that strove towards the Workingmen’s Paradise.
We can argue about this or that point of emphasis. But that it what it was. Of course, in a discussion of nationalism we can debate and integrate ‘high theory’ as I call it. That means we can advance general ideas about Nation and Identity, about Race and Culture and a social theory of co-operativism and so on, and that serves well, but unless that discussion is guided by who we are as a people and what the Promise to that people was, then theoretically wonderful it all may be – but it is but a storm in a tea-cup, meaningless as politics.
Because, you cannot have Australian nationalism if it is not referenced by Henry Lawson and William Lane, by Eureka Stockade of 1854 and Kokoda Track 1942, by the Eureka Flag and the Australian Natives Association, by Jack Lang and Frank Anstey, by John Curtin and the Australian Workers Union, by Lambing Flat of 1861 and Barcaldine of 1891 and by the White Australia Policy and the original Labour Party. Such imagery denotes a stormy politics, one that prefigures sharp change.
Henry Lawson: defined Australia and Australians
Chinese driven from Lambing Flat: miners carry a version of the Eureka Flag
That was the tradition embraced by Australia First Party. The softer patriotism of sportsmen and even Anzac Day, of the Melbourne Cup and our lifestyle-culture, can be part of that movement, but nationalism goes much deeper – to ‘Race‘ and ‘Place‘.
In 1977, I for one inside a small nationalist organisation, realised that if I was to be an Australian and work to preserve Australianity, that nationalist heritage was my heritage. I have never turned from it. I never will.
Those who lead Australia First Party regard it as the bedrock for a politics to win Australian Identity, Independence and Freedom in the crisis laden Twenty First Century. It will be the inspiration of the Co-operative Commonwealth, the new state that will put power and wealth in the hands of our people.
There is a follow-on point, a vital one.
Nationalist struggle began slowly again in Australia after 1966, after the betrayal of White Australia and this was further fuelled by the total undoing by the traitor class of the 1901 ‘national settlement’, or that the essential historical beginning of true Nationhood. The creation of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 was a step along the path to Nationhood and it was grounded in a then-necessary compromise between the Nation and the old Empire and based upon a series of organic laws and policies. The Nation advanced from that point. Thereafter from 1966, the industrial protection and social protection laws of that ‘national settlement’ were overturned and finally in 1986 with the Australia Acts – even the Constitution of the Commonwealth was fundamentally altered.
A new tradition of struggle began after 1966 and a nationalist strand of Australian struggle emerged. We are part of that half -century of tradition and all who fight need that to immerse themselves in that particular political history. We have not won the war, but participation in that struggle is part of our authority to act. The old tradition and its rebirth! Those who redefined the original nationalist ideology, the true ideology, were and are proud to have been part of this half century of struggle that must now be pursued to victory.
This is the overall heritage we defend and espouse politically. Those who are not part of it by ignorance or wilfulness do not have that mantle of historical strength upon them.
But the Politics of Australian Nationalism?
Those who are new to any movement like to think themselves fresh diviners of truth. That is reasonable enough in some ways. However, when it leads to a denial of nationalist ideology in key areas, it will lead to a false politics.
Politics is the field of endeavour whereby an ideology acquires power over people. Politics is how one applies ideas to practise.
Politics will show whether the ideology is what the players say and then, the correct ideology would make the politics on target. Dialectics.
I shall be blunt. In the ‘new model’, the codification of the half-way house emerging out of the patriot movement, I do not see any proper politics at all. I did not see any substantive politics in Reclaim or UPF in the past, other than occasionally effective pressure politics – on the governments and local authorities about Mosques and terrorism. And some clashes with the extreme-left which showed the Left’s dependence upon liberal-globalist ideology – yes – but the message was lost in the street confrontation. Yes, all useful, but weak politics.
Not a good look
One example suffices. Did any of these patriots denounce Western intelligence, or Israel, for the creation of terrorism in Libya and Syria? Did they ever say the mass of refugees from Syria could return home with the victory of Russia and Assad? No, they did not. Too dangerous? They did not raise the Islam question to a new height by pointing out the long history of collaboration with it by ‘the West’ when it suited, but kept it all as knee-jerk stuff. They had a golden opportunity to break into the mass consciousness with a radical message, but their narrow anti Islamism and search for popularity blinded them. Today, it has not changed too much.
And while some now talk of immigration as the general issue in the ex UPF and Alt-Right circles, it still appears in shadows. Some say one day they will ‘come out’ and scream it. Really?
Politics? Some other patriots say vote for Hanson or support ‘hard Liberals’ like Bernardi or Abbott. So says True Blue Crew. So it seems for others who are allied to the UPF successor, the Lads Society. They certainly don’t advocate a vote for Australia First, let alone any alliance with us – or they have no interest in any political struggle at all – and I don’t mean only electoral struggle. They would leave that struggle to the civic patriots at street level and that will go nowhere at all.
Where are The Three Stooges now?
The politics of Australian Nationalism is:
- To build a community opposition to all immigration, to Chinese Imperialism in the centre of it
- To defend all attacks upon Australian identity
- To proclaim openly where Islamist terrorism comes from in practical terms and,
- Why a movement for independence grounded in the true Australian mythology is necessary.
I also fear that this new pseudo nationalism, the new model, will link up with the main forces of long existent civic patriotism, organisationally richer versions of it – and will be swallowed by it, or become satellites of it. Is that happening?
Civic Patriotism a Great Challenge
Civic patriotism didn’t begin with Reclaim Australia and is a much bigger phenomenon It has been a persistent trend for a long time. In the 1990’s it grew with some key people in Australians Against Further Immigration and in certain Queensland patriotic parties. But it was the Hanson party that released it in full flood.
Here was a party that proclaimed nationality to be just lifestyle and national days and ceremonies, and speaking English and saluting the Flag. Those migrants who accepted this ‘Australian Way of Life’ were announced to be Australians and those who didn’t were the multicultis. At each step of the way there was no specific ethnic barrier as to who could become an Australian. Of course, as Hanson said, ‘Australia is in danger of being swamped by Asians’, but the party soon attracted a bevy of men with Asian wives and some ultimately came to be high leaders. It was clear that it was really all only a question of numbers and whether they assimilated! What – bedroom assimilation?
Civic patriots said they were loyal to institutions too, like constitutions and parliaments, things that don’t of themselves ensure freedom and which are basically under establishment control.
Now Hanson has returned and the line of civic patriotism is even stronger. To the point where ‘Australia is in danger of being swamped by Muslims’ – which it clearly is not! It is now obvious that anyone can really be an Australian, except a Muslim and even then, according to Hanson, there are Muslims who are Aussies too. As she said in a notorious Internet advert filmed with two African children: “you don’t have to be white to be an Australian.”
Pauline Hanson: the essence of civic patriotism
The central place of the Hanson party in civic patriotism should be noted. The street groups often swear loyalty to her. But Hanson is not alone. There is a veritable constellation of these organisations: Rise Up Australia, Australian Liberty Alliance, Australian Conservatives and the street groups from Soldiers of Odin to True Blue Crew. They are numerous and aggressive and while our cause isn’t exactly theirs, there is clearly a cross over and here they seek to grip us and pull us too into the swamp.
Civic patriotism is also implicitly linked to ‘mainstreaming’, a sickness that has more than once been presented to nationalists as a better (sic) strategic / tactical road. Here, we are counselled to appear reasonable (sic), tailor our policies to what we think ‘voters are thinking’ and adapt ourselves only to electoral contest.
I remember one idiot, a nice old nuncle, telling me moderate Muslims could flock to us, along with ethnic Chinese and others, if we had the right programme! Heard that stuff? With such a line, we could take over the conservative rank and file of the Liberal-National parties and be a big deal? In reality, we would be taken over by the conservative parties!
And forces of civic patriotism have another major quirk. They place themselves forward as free marketeers and to a greater or lesser extent, free traders. Bernardi says that. The others do too and even Hanson has gone that path and away from at least some of the original push-points of One Nation.
Here I make a critical point. Our Australian nationalism, based as it is upon the deep past, asserts the control of the economy by the Nation, the unity of the productive classes of the population to get this control. That core ideological thing cannot really exist amongst the civic patriots because of their conservative impulse. Even the best of the new model leadership who link through to the civics would fail here too. As I say over and again – identitarianism does not alone offer that programme either. And I must address that shortly.
The Anti-Muslim Card
The matter of Muslims in Australia has certainly created a public furore. Hence Reclaim Australia. The thing I noticed was that Reclaim came out of the same womb as the Tea Party and tax protests, all things with Liberal Party connections. There was that weird coincidence whereby on a day in August 2011 at Southbank in Brisbane the entire later leadership of Queensland One Nation all stood in a line outside a Max Brenner Chocolate Shop to counter-picket a pro Palestine group. They were all Ziopatriots and for them support for Israel was a defining thing for modern conservatism.
When this anti Muslim movement got going in 2013-14, some people, nationalists included, thought that it might be to our advantage in heightening a general consciousness about immigration. Generally we were quite wrong.
This movement was already articulated from behind the scenes before it was put out there. Their line would be ‘Diversity Minus Islam’ (which is still diversity). It was further the case that it would be a Zionist construct linked by various threads to the Zionists within Australian Jewry who would have Australia follow a pro Israel foreign policy.
This anti Muslim noise got stronger in the first decade of the century and it reached that point where the establishment could use it in its own interest (support for its Middle East wars) and as a means to sidetrack potentially nationalist forces.
Of course, nothing goes to plan absolutely. Some other elements were attracted, like the UPF type and they thought seriously about nationalism. And then they generally froze and took the road of the new model. After all, they had seen crowds and enjoyed fan status and wanted to continue that way. The lure, I would say, was too great. That seemed clever. Yet again, things don’t go to plan.
The Creation of a ‘new model’ for Ideology and a ‘new model’ of Conduct
In recent times, I have seen also the creation of a supposed new model for nationalism. This model arose somewhat accidentally, but may – and I hate to say it – true to appetites. It was one where some supposed nationalists inside patriot groups looked about and said that they could use the civic patriot edge and appeal and control it. They said that the Alt-Right lent intellectual credibility to arguments and was a new fresh youthful movement. Then they noted too that some kids liked to muck about a bit with ideas gleaned from fascism as did Alt-Right and that provided a bit of naughty glue to everything. So they summed it together
This amalgam cannot be described as nationalism. It is convenient for some would-be leaders as it blends in some young folk who like the idea of nationalism and it can hold their attention.
In particular, this idea arose in sections of UPF. But cross fertilization took place. Some in Alt-Right thought that their identiitarian views were also nationalism and had pushed identitarianism. And some UPF liked identitarianism because it was simple, trite, reasonable and fresh.
Let me say this: identitarianism is not nationalism. Why? Of course, I like it in the abstract and I like the people who advance it and I like their courage too. But it is only about identity. It had no politics beyond protest and activism that highlights identity. It can become a youth sub-culture and while that serves a limited purpose, it is (i) disconnected from the historical nationalist parties of struggle as the European examples show (ii) does not advance a programme of national and social liberation and freedom that can sustain a mass movement and one day – a government.
Identitarianism is now colonizing the space of part of the patriot scene and the Alt-Right. It also inspires certain young people who, I am afraid to say, sometimes fetishize fascist things which had been part of the Alt-Right’s joking style. It is easier to be an identitarian than a nationalist. One doesn’t need a political programme or an overall strategy. Some Identitarians style themselves conservative and they seek to influence ‘mainstream discourse’. Yet, the call has gone out for nativization of all ideology. Eureka Youth League has said that and others too. Australia First Party would encourage that in every way. Identitarianism should also be put under the blow torch of nativization.
Even Fetishized Fascism Takes A Look In
I would pass a necessary comment on fascism, passingly relevant as it may be, to the glue of the new model. The Alt-Right did a lot of joking with fascist ideological references.
Of course, fascism is a massive subject beyond the ken of most and easy to misunderstand. With some youth, it gets picked up as a fetish.
I am not talking about fascism in any detail, other than to say its mythology can be a disorganizing principle in the soup. I say that because it causes some to misunderstand modern realities or design policies and tactics based upon a situation that no longer exists. In doing that, they are not the media stereotype of a play-actor nazi or some similar, but the fascist mythology just that does not resonate in Australian history and historical fascist practice may in fact have run contrary to Australian interests.
The fascist reference also keeps some youth away from analysing Australian facts through Australian eyes. However, as a joking unity of people in veritable opposition to nationalist ideology and politics, it could take on a sinister and unfortunate role. That has not arisen yet in practise, but to warn against may help to scotch it and allow some to trade out of it as soon as possible.
Nationalism At Electoral and Community and Cultural Level: The Struggle
As a nationalist I embrace the political programme of Australia First and the strategic / tactical plan put forward in the Three Tier Method as explained in our booklet Party Of The Nation. Other nationalists in Australia have similar programmes and so on. But as a collectivity we are here to develop ourselves electorally and in the community and at street level and as a cultural-ideological movement of defence and explanation of our culture and the ideas necessary to defend and advance it.
This three tier method makes us unique. In the last few years, despite the weathering we have received from the new winds, we have grown – ideologically, politically and organizationally. Our collective resources are greater than before and the initiative has passed to us.
The attack upon Australia by Chinese imperialism which the nationalists have been pushing as a central principle to reorganize and re-validate our entire movement – is now visible to many Australians and even some of our intelligentsia. And Chinese imperialism is the vanguard to the recolonisation of the country by masses in thrall to globalist capitalism.
These issues make the side issue of Muslim immigration and terrorism – exactly that, a side issue.
We nationalists are bow reorganizing to resume the offensive.
Australia First Party: Forwards!
In addressing these matters, I re-state the point that correct ideology inspires a proper politics. It is in my view incumbent that we impose by force of logic and force of struggle, the nationalist line upon ‘identitarians’ and many other patriots – until their conversion.
In that regard, the party has opportunities to engage with the ‘new model’ and with the voter and community bases of the main civic patriot forces. But we do that as people convinced of our correctness. Patience and action will show that they either take this road, or fail – to serve the Australian People and Nation.
The opportunities to add numbers and resources to our movement are here before us. Woe if we do not act.
Forwards!
