Right-wing extremism in Australia: the rise of the new radical right

ABSTRACT

This research examines the shifting momentum of right-wing extremism (RWE) in Australia. The study provides an in-depth assessment of eight of the most active RWE groups in Australia, through their online presence where they espouse their ideological narrative and propaganda statements. The phenomenon of new radical right (NRR) groups is explored through a three-pronged mixed method research design: Firstly, a content analysis of core narrative themes contained on websites of RWE groups; secondly, a thematic analysis of RWE ‘online’ discussion forums; and thirdly, a critical analysis of Google Trends data on the shifting patterns of popularity of various extremism-related search terms amongst the general population. A problem–solution mapping tool that was developed for this research that quantifies the ‘ideological space’ occupied by different ‘new’ RR groups compared with ‘old’ RWE groups is presented. The overall findings are that NRR groups pose political and community challenges to the nature of Australian Society. Moreover, there is evidence of a contest for ideological dominance between ‘old-style’ RWE groups and ‘new-style’ Radical (Far) Right Extremism groups in Australia. The ‘online’ forum data and Google trends data confirm this finding. The practical implications of these challenges and the future directions of this research as well as its limitations are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Australian right-wing extremism
• far-right extremism
• new radical right
• google trends

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In this study we rely on Sainsbury’s definition of ideology as ‘a body of normative-related ideas about the nature of man and society as well as the organisation and purposes of society’ (1980, p. 8)

2. As Facebook is currently the most popular social media platform in Australia (Cowling, 2016), it is reasonable to use the number of Facebook subscribers as an indicator of popularity of these groups in social media.

3. The eighth RWE group the Australian Sovereign Citizens was not included in this radar chart as it has specific ideological features as a ‘single-issue’ group that is not shared by the other groups. Its own radar chart mapping will be commented on in the result section.

4. Note: the % shown on a radar chart will vary for each RWE group examined because the number of documents available for analysis for each group varied. Therefore how to interpret a particular % is as follows: For instance, for the ‘strong state’ narrative theme it was found to be 10% of all the documents analysed for RA as noted in Figure 5. Hence, a % refers to the average coverage of text for a particular narrative theme found in all the documentation for that particular group.