Following an investigation by the ABC that revealed that Australia‘s alt-right was making a bid at infiltrating the NSW Nats, the party is now making an attempt to purge 20 members over links to white supremacy.
The ABC is reporting that 20 members of the Nationals will receive a letter asking them to justify why they should remain in the party, with NSW state director Ross Cadell telling the ABC that some of those being written to have displayed more serious behaviour than others:
Some of them have partaken in hate speech and some of them haven’t, but they are linked closely enough that we want to get some understanding of where they are and that’s what we hope to do.
There’s a photo of them pulling alleged white power symbol at a dinner table and there’s some members of the party that were just sitting there.
They aren’t pulling the same symbol, but they are doing hand gestures and we just want to clarify where they are, what they’re doing and what is their involvement, if any.
The Daily Telegraph is reporting that they’ve seen a “dossier” outlining 40 members of the party with “extensive links to neo-Nazi, fascist and alt-Right groups“. Cadell told the Telegraph that there are 19 people they have a “have a high degree of confidence in” (their ties to white supremacy I imagine, not confidence in them in general), but are investigating 35 people in total.
Cadell also told the Telegraph that some of those under investigation were branch executives, and that one in particular is a staffer for a Nationals minister.
Nationals leader and highly forgettable deputy PM Michael McCormack tweeted this afternoon about the investigation, rejecting extremism as a party of the Nationals platform:
The Nationals will not tolerate extremism or the politics of hate. People found to engage with such radicalism are not welcome in our party. We are a grassroots party proudly championing what matters most to our regional and rural communities – always has been, always will be.
— Michael McCormack (@M_McCormackMP) October 29, 2018
Between this, senator Fraser Anning‘s failed attempt at a plebiscite for whether we should reinstate the White Australia policy, and the huge ‘OK to be white’ cock-up from the government, it’s not been a great month for this country.
Last year, Nationals MP George Christensen said that he regretted making an appearance on The Convict Report, a white nationalist podcast run by The Dingoes, a group the Daily Telegraph singled out in their report on the infiltration:
An alt-right group that shares content with followers with an underlying theme of white supremacy. The men particularly take aim at the indigenous and multicultural values held in Australia.
If you’re interested in learning more about how active white nationalism and white supremacy are in Australia and how they are organising, I would 100% recommend giving the ABC’s Background Briefing podcast episode about the infiltration of the Nats a listen. Very informative, very scary stuff.
