Fascist group exposed in youth wing of Australia’s National Party
By
Oscar Grenfell
22 November 2018
An Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) “Background Briefing” program last month exposed a fascistic group inside the youth wing of the rural-based National Party, which is in coalition governments with the Liberal Party at the federal level and in a number of states.
Members of the group had been permitted to join the New South Wales (NSW) state branch of the Young Nationals and were elected to executive posts in the organisation. Following the ABC program, the executive of the NSW Nationals banned 22 members for life and prohibited members from involvement with a number of extreme right-wing parties and organisations. It was a damage-control operation.
According to “Background Briefing,” individuals associated with the “alt-right,” the umbrella term for a far-right and fascistic movement, joined the Nationals in late 2017 and early 2018.
The program stated they had discussed infiltrating “mainstream” political parties in a closed Facebook group called “The New Guard.”
The name is significant. The New Guard was a paramilitary and political organisation founded in NSW in 1931. Modelled on fascist movements in Europe and promoted by sections of the political establishment, its members, including former soldiers, carried out violent attacks on socialist and left-wing organisations, and discussed plans for a coup against the NSW Labor government of Premier Jack Lang.
The media depicted the expelled individuals as attempting a hostile infiltration, before being eventually repelled by the National Party. In reality, the far-right elements gained entry into one of the capitalist elite’s main parties under conditions of a shift to the right by the…