In the years from 2015, various associations, online communities, local initiatives and individual authors, struggled to express their emergent Australian nationalism. They essentially did so independently of the existing reference-point nationalist writers and organisations
There is no need to name the groups or the individuals involved in these new nationalist-minded efforts.
Sometimes, in the hyper-critical mass media and the rantings of so-called anti-fascists (sic), this movement was labelled Alt-Right, fascist, racist, but always extremist and beyond the pale of polite liberal society.
Unfortunately, as the movement’s affairs unfolded, toxic persons and parasitic circles attached themselves and attempted to manipulate it. Some of those persons went on to establish perverse associations of their own, based upon alien ideology and they subsequently became the focus of investigation (and possibly honey-pot manipulation) by political police agencies. The general public might be forgiven for essentially confusing the two lines of thought and action.
Yet quickly enough, the decent and logical people rejected the negative elements and in their rejectionism, this movement has survived, albeit quietly and perhaps for some time, not sure where it should go.
It has been observed lately by the Australia First nationalists that the majority in this movement came to embrace the core principles of historical Australian nationalism: nativism, labourism, and literary radical-nationalism of the period of Australian cultural growth, 1880-1930. And then, they related themselves positively to other nationalist ideas, forces and authors from that time forwards and integrated it all as part of their ideological heritage. They have then looked at the decline and the crisis of the Australianist impulse in the welter of globalist ideology and politics and have rightly asked: can Australia and Australians survive their time?
Their intellectual struggle is to be commended. But ideas of themselves do not change the world of facts and the debate now ranges over the need to act.
The hour is late and it is a truism that we cannot afford further divided effort. Our two forces now recognise each other. Where there can be unity in action, that unity must be developed. The first point of unity is ideological convergence. That has occurred. What is required henceforward, is a united politics.
Australia First takes the view that it must open itself to all available nationalists as a portal of opportunity. The resources amassed over time by the Australia First nationalists should now be applied to a stronger base. The ‘alternative’ nationalist movement can take up a fulsome history by converging with an Australia First movement with roots in the first organisations of nationalism after the Great Betrayal of the White Australia Policy after 1966 and through some actors of that period backwards into the historical phases of Australian nationalism. This is a rich history and it is a collective history that sets up the boundary of legitimacy. Our joint cause is not something conjured up somewhere or other, but an intrinsic part of the heritage of our land.
Let us unite and carry the struggle forwards!