Scrutinising the religious and political right

The Australian Protectionist Party (APP) has recently invited Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party (BNP) to Australia. Churches, community groups, unions and anti racist groups in the United Kingdom (UK), are campaigning against his visit.

Writing to the Australian High Commissioner, they note that Griffin has been “convicted of incitement to racial hatred and is bound to whip up further racism”. They say, “he has repeatedly denied the holocaust, dismissing it as a “Holohoax”, believes the media is under Jewish control and [that] he has forged close links and friendships with convicted terrorists across the globe”.

The Australian Federal Minister for Immigration, Chris Evans, has issued a statement indicating, that while Griffin has not, as yet, applied for a visa, he will have to satisfy the requirements of the “character test”. This test ensures, “that a non citizen will not vilify, incite discord in, or represent a danger to the Australian community, or a segment of that community”.

In short, for the campaigners, “the BNP is a racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and Islam phobic organisation”.

However, in the past couple of years the BNP has been re-inventing itself and in the recent local government elections it won more than 100 seats throughout the UK. While this is less than 1 per cent of the total number of seats, its increasing profile is causing concern. The Church of England, for example, has attacked the BNP funded, “Christian Council of Great Britain”, for presenting a racist agenda as Christian, and appropriating Christian language and symbols, which are the very opposite of Christian values.

According to the APP’s, Darrin Hodges, Griffin had been invited to “speak to Australians on the experiences of the BNP in their fight to protect Britain and its people from the demographic genocide that is threatening their homeland, caused by the large scale immigration from the Third World”. According to Hodges, “Griffin has been successful in bringing nationalism into the mainstream of politics”.

At the moment there is little interest or concern in Australia, as to whether or not, Griffin passes the character test and gets a visa. An Australian Jewish community spokesman, says, that, “the visit ought to be a matter of concern for Australia’s Muslim community, indeed, by all communities here who have found that tolerance and engagement is a better path that division and hatred”. No bishop or politician appears greatly concerned, with the only scrutiny of the decision coming from bloggers, such as “slackbastard”.

In part, this lack of interest is based on the fact that the APP is but one of a number of small extremist groups, which periodically fragment, divide, and unite, but mostly live out their lives on the margins of Australian political life.

With groups such as the Australia First Party, it has begun, nevertheless, to actively campaign in local council elections on platforms of opposing “state imposed multiculturalism”, keeping Australia white, and opposing, “mosques, sex shops and any developments that undermine Australia’s traditional and family values”. It’s difficult, I guess, for most Australians, to take seriously the APP’s claim, that it has “risen from the ashes of multi-decadinal-nationalist political failure, to become a prominent and viable alternative party”.

Hodges, the leader of this “viable alternative”, came last in Ward D elections, in the Sutherland Shire, with 333 votes, or 2 per cent of the total.

However, there is a need not to be too complacent. Extremist groups thrive in times of economic instability and uncertainty. Scapegoats are created, minorities feared and foreigners demonised, particularly if they happen to be Arab or Muslim Australians.

Further, extremist political groups such as the APP, and the plethora of fundamentalist and para-church organisations, mirror each other. They split, multiply, and then re-form; both lack transparency, in terms of membership and finances, and both sets of organisations, are run and controlled by men. Both see multiculturalism as evil, family values under threat, and both are more comfortable with a theocracy, than democracy.