Review 22.10
25 July - 7 August 1997

In August 1977, the world witnessed what was then the worst rioting on the British mainland since the days of Sir Oswald Mosley when leftist and anti-racist demonstrators sought to halt a march in London by the neo-fascist National Front. For much of the day, during and after the march, police fought running battles with anti-Front demonstrators, some of whom were armed with bricks, paving stones, knives, coshes and even bottles of ammonia.

A week or so later, the Front came third in a by-election, beating the centrist Liberal Party into fourth place. The anti-racist and left candidates polled extremely poorly. The violence surrounding National Front rallies had had little if any impact on its electoral popularity; it also gave the Front a martyr status that it did not deserve, particularly as many of its members were inclined to violence themselves, albeit under the cover of darkness. Nor had voters rewarded the left for its valiant struggle against the fascist beast.

Those opponents of Pauline Hanson who politically favour wrecking the meetings of her One Nation Party should perhaps think on this when next discussing tactics.

On a pragmatic basis alone, it is counterproductive to employ a tactic that only brings one's opponent more favourable publicity. This is not to suggest that opponents of Pauline Hanson should ignore her completely, or abstain from public demonstrations, but I fail to see how chucking water-filled balloons at old age pensioners furthers the anti-racist cause. (Notice I didn't write "urine-filled condoms". This little touch of media-inspired dramatisation has all the feel of a classic urban legend. Common sense alone tells us that the filling process would be a ghastly and improbable event.)

Much responsibility for this excitable nonsense is due to the testosterone-driven self-indulgence of the radical left, and I say that as one who can say with a straight face, "some of my best friends are radical leftists". The British International Socialists, whose Australian comrades-in-arms have played a prominent role in the anti-Hanson demonstrations, used to have a rioting song which began with the jolly words: "If there's any f**king trouble, we're the first c**ts in". I bet they f**king were.

If politics is a war of ideas, it would appear that the far-right internationally has been winning some key battles over the past few years, and this is hardly surprising if its most vocal opponents are fighting those ideas by jumping up and down and making a lot of noise.

From immigration controls through to attacks on multi-culturalism, far-right ideas have gained the ascendancy in even mainstream circles, and what is needed in response is not noise but more cogent ideas. The radical left might argue that these ideas can be found in the pages of its press, but the average Hansonite is unlikely to consult those pages if they've been using their copy of Green Left Weekly or Socialist Worker as a shield against a barrage of eggs. And it is undoubtedly the case that some who have attended Hanson's meetings have gone out of a genuine curiosity, fuelled perhaps by a dissatisfaction with the major parties that other marginal political groups - i.e. those of the radical left - should hardly be bullying into submission.

The violence at the meetings - particularly the bashing of the 59-year-old man in Dandenong - might not necessarily have been committed by those on the radical left, but one wonders what sort of an environment they expect to create where they talk endlessly of "smashing" racism, as if racial discrimination and prejudice is of the same degree of complexity as a rather ugly vase of your auntie's that you'd like to take to with a hammer.

Not that the violence is all one-sided. The legitimisation of racism over the past year has led to many untold and unreported acts of bullying and violence against non-European and indigenous Australians. Equally, I couldn't help but think that the young Aboriginal boys accused of spitting on Ms. Hanson might have been showing a far clearer understanding of what her punitive politics meant to their community than did the Prime Minister, who was happy to repackage her outlandish claims as a robust exercise of free speech until the opinion polls began to bite. I would also argue, for example, that the violence endured by Aboriginal Australians over 200 years is far more pernicious than anything that has happened outside Pauline Hanson's meetings. But I'm never going to be able to explain such complex ideas to a Hansonite if I'm hurling half-a-dozen free-range eggs at them.

Indeed, this is why the sound and fury directed at Ms. Hanson is truly criminal. Her racist soundbites (let's not dignify them with the word "policies") are begging to be taken apart. Her support base is actually wafer thin, based as it is on miserable sentiment and mind-bending ignorance. With a few honourable exceptions, neither the media nor our mainstream politicians have made much of an effort to rigorously rebut and refute her views.

And what is the far-left doing? It is shoring up those supporters by shifting anti-Hansonism from a debate about ideas (which I believe Ms. Hanson is singularly ill-equipped to win) to a show of strength, a battle of macho posturing. Her supporters no longer have to defend their views; instead they comfort themselves in the sure knowledge that Australia no longer has free speech, that to disagree with the "politically correct" is an invitation to violence, that their opponents are all rabble. Every hurled tomato makes them right, every epithet is a badge of honour.

And yes, as the far left knows, some of those who might have gone to a One Nation meeting might think otherwise when they see the rioting on the television. But that's not necessarily going to stop them from voting for One Nation in the tranquil privacy of the polling booth. As for most of those who do brave the flying vegetables and turn up to hear Pauline's nightmare vision, the far-left is making a big mistake to assume they're extremists. On the other hand, there's nothing more guaranteed to harden your views than a well-aimed egg at the back of your neck.