A response to the Australia First Party

In January of this year the Australia First Party published an interesting document on their website, titled ‘an open letter to Australian Marxist-Leninists’, showing sympathy and attempting to lay the foundations for a ‘red-brown alliance’. Perhaps embarrassed by the open thuggery of the NSN (which to their credit, the AFP has written a rather amusing article attacking), the AFP has been shifting towards a ‘left-fascist’ position that reframes their politics as more or less a sort of nativist social-democracy inspired by the early days of the Australian Labor Party. Their policies contain a mix of reasonable sounding left-ish demands for ending foreign ownership, more local democracy and so on with some awkward attempts to force in ‘White Australia’ without sounding *too* racist.

The AFP nowadays, having started as your more stereotypical violent racist thugs, is a decrepit organisation and we doubt anyone except us paid much attention to their letter. However, there is more to investigating this than just arguing with a small handful of ‘I’m-not-a-racist-but-’ types trying to rebrand themselves. ‘Left-fascism’ as it exists today is a form of anachronistic social democracy, a long-faded shadow. It occupies the same place as sovereign citizens, new age hippies, conspiracy theorists and other sorts of disorganised, politically impotent anti-systemic forces; and our critique of this position can be applied broadly towards all these sorts of movements. We do not consider it a primary enemy in political struggle – rather, this is a form of petite-bourgeois socialism and false consciousness.

The letter in question shows a fundamental misunderstanding of Marxism-Leninism. The critique is a rather surface level claim that Marxism-Leninism is ‘outdated’ and cannot explain why Capitalism is globalised. It phrases a third-positionist nationalism as the weapon against capitalism in the age of globalism; with the language of self-determination:

“Australian nationalism […] is the modern continuation of the old labor tradition, the strand of Australian socialism that understood economic justice and national self-determination as inseparable […] this bears no resemblance to neo-Nazi cults of German ethnic chauvinism or imperial ambition. Australian nationalism does not seek racial empire or biology hierarchy […] It affirms the rights to all peoples of independence, including white Australians, who are routinely told their claims to continuity and belonging are somehow illegitimate”

We want to address the specific claim of ‘white Australians’ needing self-determination. The AFP, in the tradition of similar historical nationalists like Percy Stephenson, thankfully recognises that Indigenous Australians have a right to live here, avoiding that most odious anti-human stance of most white supremacists. Instead, they argue that the descendants of colonists have a historical existence created by the reproduction of their own way of life on the land, and this constitutes its own nation. We contend that there cannot be a ‘white Australian’ nationality that can be separated from descendants of non-white migrants in the modern day. A fourth-generation Chinese Australian for instance is practically of the same nationality as any english-speaking anglo. If we accept that German, Irish, English, Scottish etc. descendants no longer comprise separate nationalities after generations living in Australia on the basis that they now all speak the same language, have the same shared cultural norms and so on then there is no reason to not apply the same logic to people of non-European origin. For an explanation of what a ‘nation’ is, please read Stalin on the national question

White nationalism cannot be made benign because it is an inherently dividing project, it entails the destruction of the existing Australian nationality and the forcible exclusion of its ‘non-white’ element. A value-neutral white ethnic pride is also not possible. The concept of ‘whiteness’ only existed due to a particular historical moment where the myriad European ethnicities and nationalities were grouped into a single category in opposition to the rest of the world and as a tool to justify ‘national unity’ during the ongoing process of settler-colonialism. One can certainly be proud of their own heritage from a particular European nationality, but taking whiteness itself as something to be proud of cannot be separated from the inherently exclusionary, imperialist process that it represented.

Returning to the article and its depiction of Australian nationalism as an ‘upgrade’ of Marxism-Leninism, our refutation is that Marxism-Leninism already contains within itself the tools to confront globalist capitalism and is the only system that can actually do so. The letter ‘refutes’ a caricature of Marxism-Leninism that apparently does not understand imperialism or cultural hegemony and suggests a narrow parochial volk-socialism tied to a repulsive and historically discredited national project instead. We uphold the necessity of national-liberation as a prerequisite for socialist construction. This is the New Democratic revolution, which would have its own sort of left-wing nationalism as its ideological rallying point. This New Democratic nationalism, unlike the psuedo-leftist white nationalism of the AFP, takes the Australian people as they are as its basis rather than attempting to force a racialised, imperialist identity onto it.

The only way to fight liberal-capitalism is to form a project capable of uniting the masses against it. Fringe ‘anti-capitalist’ third positionists fail at this because their exclusionary ideology creates divisions amongst the people, allowing the liberal establishment to play divide-and-conquer. Why is it that the only accomplishments of Australian white nationalists in the 21^st century have been terrorising random innocent people and providing a casus beli for the government to further crack down on dissent? Despite rejecting the current generation of degenerate fascist thugs, the AFP were just as guilty in their early days – The founder of the party, Jim Saleam, got his start in firebombing communist bookshops and the party participated in meaningless violent hooliganism during the Cronulla race riots. Being an inherently reactionary ideology, it is no surprise that White Nationalism has served little purpose beyond mobilising goons to divide & conquer.

Any ‘positive’ element (such as the superficial commitment to Australian independence) contained within these third positionist formations can be found in the New Democratic patriotic revolutionary consciousness. Anyone still clinging to these positions should rid themselves of backwards ideas and take up the cause of building the New Democratic movement.