This article was written by a former One Nation insider. It has been edited by Australia First writers to disguise those trivial things that would give away the identity of the author, but still allow him to write in a personal way. We shall hear from ‘Stalking Horse’ again and again.
My readers must know I was a loyal One Nation person. It gives me no sneaky-pleasure to speak about those I served. However, I came to understand that One Nation is not a challenge to our political order, but is actually part of it. I know how bitter I felt about that, how angry I was, but all that is nothing to how millions of voters and tens of thousands of members will feel not long into the future. That anger could make for a real politics, a radical politics and I am a radical now. I want to see the One Nation rank and file radicalize and search for a new ideology and politics which supplies that spirit! That is why I speak out, why I am pleased to write for Australia First.
The rise of One Nation.
The opinion polls suggest One Nation has surged to be Australia’s largest party. Yes, this could be clawed back a little by the time of the next Federal election in 2028 and Pauline Hanson may never become Prime Minister; but we can be confident that One Nation will likely be part of either a formal or informal three-party-Coalition with the Liberals and the Nationals. One Nation could in effect, enter the government.
I note that Australia First said recently: “We do not seek to be, as some might have it, a sour competitor to One Nation. Quite the contrary. It is only through ON’s development that conservatism as a system can work itself out and play itself out. If over the next two to three years we comment upon One Nation, it is not to stymie it, but to demonstrate the contradictions of organized conservatism to its voters and members and to prepare our own supporters and members for the dramatic events now rapidly approaching.”
I say that Australia First would not, indeed no patriot or nationalist party could, win a confrontation with One Nation in a political-war on the ground over the next couple of years. It is a matter of resources and even since you have written these words, One Nation has grown in the polls and in membership and in financing. I see that Australia First looks at the big picture and declines a fight it would not win. Smart! The secret to winning the struggle is to let One Nation grow organizationally, because it will not grow ideologically and because its politics is to work for others. I shall come to that, because I perceive One Nation from first principles: its ideology is conservatism and it seeks to work with conservatives. Its membership might increase and its coffers can grow, but it is hamstrung by what it is. It is bound to an establishment it pretends to fight. It then serves that establishment. That is its politics.A couple of fault lines show this situation.
Fault Lines
There is a set of deep contradictions inside One Nation. I do not expect the mass of people flocking to it right now will get that. That’s for us to see.
Consider one big one. One Nation says it is there to get rid of a “bad” Labor government. They are running a “fire the liar” campaign. Big deal. So what if Albanese is a lying rat and if the Labor government is a “bad” government. What were the Liberal-National governments? What have all governments been in one way or another back to Bob Menzies and many before? What is being said which places One Nation outside the corrupt system? All that is being urged is that the voters remove Labor, maybe keep it out for decades while a conservative bloc of the Liberal-Nationals and One Nation keeps the ship steady. Now, our country has been there before, so you have to believe that is the model to follow. Keeping Labor out doesn’t mean evil isn’t done. And that is what I learned from the advent of John Howard’s government in 1996. Then came high immigration, foreign wars, economic Asianisation
One Nation has said many times it wishes to help the Liberal-National parties to live up to their core mission of non “left wing” government. ON will direct its “preferences” to them. It will vote “supply” to the next LNP government. Yet, if the One Nation says here and there that Liberal and Labor are really a “uniparty”, then why favour one over the other?
So, One Nation plays the old system game of uniting the Right against the Left. That means working with the establishment. I think people will see that, but only after the damage is done.
Consider another big one, maybe even the biggest one. One Nation touts itself as the anti immigration party. That’s one reason the mass of people are rallying to it. The holes in this one are legion. Maybe I always knew it. But I certainly understood the lie when Pauline ‘returned’ in 2016 and it was that Australia was in “danger” of being swamped by Muslims. What happened to the Asians, being “swamped by Asians”? That’s when I understood that if the problem could just morph like that, it might be Pauline was never serious about Asian immigration either. I intend to ride this one with you over the next couple of years.
For now, think about Dave Farley, newly minted One Nation Member for Farrer. He ran a cheap labour enterprise in the Northern Territory. He says lots of Muslims live in his electorate area and they are “assimilating” real well. Pauline has agreed with that, evening claiming that while the kids are radicalizing, the parents are becoming “assimilated”! Then the Honourable Mr. Farley chatted up Sikhs and attended a Riverina Sikh games festival! Of course, One Nation has had Sikh candidates too, as the illustration here shows. Yes, ‘Sikh and you shall find – One Nation’, the new slogan I hope will become posters and slogans on walls!
I suppose the bomb finally dropped on many true believers when Pauline Hanson announced that the immigration program of the party involved 130,000 migrants per year chosen on “values” and not by any ethnicity. She didn’t even go for a cessation of migrationlike Clive Palmer is spinning in newspaper ads every day.
Finally, Pauline Hanson appeared at the National Press Club on June 17 and said that she was opposed to multiculturalism, asserted that Australia should be monocultural, but that “Australia is a multiracial society”. We know what that means: the destruction of the real Australian identity.
Long ago, I recall people telling me that was the party’s true position. I knew it, but I said “no” to myself, that it was all some sort of trick. It isn’t. This is the great cleavage which in a couple of years will rip One Nation apart; explode it, perhaps, is a better term.
As the political heat rises and people take to the activist and patriotic road, then they find out One Nation would wipe Australian identity away, the recipe is there for some real dissension.
Note this too. One Nation will try to recruit non Europeans like Indians and Chinese and they will get a few too. However, the great bulk of these immigrants don’t buy monoculturalism anymore than the old multiculturalism. Their numbers are such that they live in enclaves and they won’t take too kindly to monoculturalism. Basically, they don’t need us anyway. As they behave as colonists, One Nation will stumble and worse, be infected by those who have joined, and not know how to respond. It makes for a mess – and an opportunity for the nationalists reading this to start recruiting!
Self-deception runs riot
I am acquainted with a lot of folks across different movements and many still inside One Nation, who are saying that Pauline is the first step, that she is opening the door to a great new patriotic mobilisation, doing the true job for all of us. No! That is not her intention and not what she is doing. What One Nation is really doing is making chaos in place of certainties. From my point of view that is actually better, but One Nation will not be the beneficiary. Of course, changing parties in parliament isn’t revolutionary, but when old parties with long lives founder and break and are replaced by others, there is a shift in the public mood. People think there is change. So, One Nation rises and becomes the main conservative party. The system is the same, but it looks different. It is that which creates the political gap in the public mind for other arguments and new forces. If one new force can rise, why not another? That’s what some will start to think.
There are some people too, who imagine that One Nation offers potential to be a type of vanguard force which will allow nationalists and other patriots to work within it, grow within it and come out later to change the party’s direction. Good luck with that. That strategy is called entryism and I know enough of One Nation to know that the spotters will be out in force to identify anyone trying it. Basically, the party is big enough too, to lose a few infiltrators and not decry a membership loss. But I think the real problem for anyone who joins with a plan is that One Nation would grind them into paste and render them into servants. After a while, they wouldn’t realise they had become de facto loyalists.
Again, no! If you don’t agree with One Nation or are a nationalist, or even have some other agenda – do your own thing. Best of all, join the nationalist party.
The long hard road is the surest road
So, what should Australia First nationalists do? The One Nation steamroller is coming down the road and you can’t stop it. It will go where it will go. Just stand out of the way. I want to see One Nation expand to its full limits. So, prepare. Start building your networks, your publications, your structures and so forth.This is the hardest road but the surest road for those who don’t want to change governments but change systems. That is what it has come to and this is what we must fight for.
Until next time,
Stalking Horse