Is One Nation the site of Australia's Alt-Right?

Pauline Hanson's recent disruptive attempt in the Australian Parliament to gain support for her motion that "It's okay to be white" has been labelled as a call for a return to a conservative racism.

The motion put forward in October 2018 proposed that Parliament acknowledge "the deplorable rise of anti-white racism and attacks on Western civilisation" and that it recognise that "it is okay to be white".

Many commentators have labelled this evidence of an increased return to an ultra-conservative entrenchment of racism and white superiority in Australia. In many ways, of course, it is right to say that Australia has maintained culturally an anglo-white superiority despite the forms of multiculturalism brought in by the Whitlam government in the 1970s. By the era of John Howard, multiculturalism remained official government policy, although there were clear moves to ensure that "white Australia" was retained as the social core and norm and Australian English firmly articulated as the only language, leaving multiculturalism from the mid-1990s onwards to be more about access to exotic foods and festivals than a genuine embrace of diversity in Australian policy.

Claims, therefore, by parties such as One Nation and other ultra-right conservatives that white people are being marginalised by affirmative action and what they derisively label "special rights" are merely acts of dog-whistling that portray a falsehood about the true social make-up and cultural practices of Australian politics and Australian everyday life.

Where these commentators, however, have been wrong is in suggesting that Pauline Hanson's act is a return to something old-a call for a return to the white Australia policy.

Rather, this is part of a new model of public engagement for One Nation which has shifted from being a party built on a right-wing populist-racism to one which is quickly adopting the models, language and behaviours of the United States' alt-right.

Every aspect of this shameful act in parliament bears the hallmarks not of racist conservatism but of the absurd and disruptive theatrics of the North American alt-right. In some ways, this is more dangerous: while attempts through reasoned (albeit wholly unreasonable) argument to return the White Australia policy can only fail in the twenty-first century, the disruption to legitimate political processes (however unreasonable themselves) risks the introduction of extremist or problematic goverance as has been seen in populist elections in the United States and elsewhere.

The changing One Nation Party

Pauline Hanson's One Nation party began in 1997 as a populist party, built on the back of the unexpected popularity of Ms Hanson after her election as a candidate disendorsed from the Liberal Party for the revelation of her anti-Indigenous views.

Although Hanson's language, demeanour and difficulty answering media questions positioned her as a political outsider, her support base was broadly a conservative nationalist one, drawing primarily on the conservatism among northern Queenslanders.

Over the past two years, however, we are seeing a significant tactical turn towards a different kind of populism, that of the alt-right.

The tactics of wearing a burqa into parliament to make a point in August 2017 was resoundingly condemned by conservative politicians. Although many conservative politicians supported her "it's okay to be white" motion inititially-apparently as a result of an administrative error-this support was quickly withdrawn as unacceptable and inappropriate for an Australian parliament.

Indeed, part of the rejection of these is not due to a wholesale disagreement between conservatives and Pauline Hanson on policy, as much of the conservative base eschews neoliberal laissez-faire approaches to migration and seeks to preserve an Anglo-European core of Australian culture. Rather, it is a difference of tactic, style and representation and the way in which Hanson draws on alt-right theatrics rather than policy formation and debate.

What are alt-right theatrics?

Former poster-boy of the US alt-right, Milo Yiannopoulos claimed in 2016 that the alt-right was a movement for "western supremacy" rather than "white supremacy" and supporting capitalism, democracy, freedom of expression and liberalism, although obscured the extent to which it can be described as racist.

However, a more critically-engaged understanding of the alt-right is to view it as a disjunct and non-unified set of claims that includes racism, white supremacy and western superiority, articulated through complex theatrics that disrupt rather than contribute to public debate.

What makes the alt-right distinctive are two aspects of public engagement: the politics of theatrical performance and the cynical adoption of the language of progressive politics of inclusivity and diversity to make claims about white vulnerability.

In the case of the first, Hanson's attempt to wear a burqa into parliament and other kinds of grandstanding are no different from the alt-right attempts-particularly by figures such as Milo Yiannopoulos, to shock, abuse, upset or de-value the spaces in which they are operating. For Yiannopoulos, that kind of theatrics got him permanently banned from Twitter

in 2016 and kicked off university campuses for his theatrical performances of hate speech and ultimately removed from media roles for the offence caused by his past attempts to shock audiences.

While parliamentary privileges protect Hanson from removal, her antics have the same form: designed to shock, upset and offend in a way which disrupts the ordinary workings of the contemporary western institutions she claims to protect.

Alt-Right Adoption of the Language of Progress Identity Politics

The second tactic of the alt-right and utilised this month by Hanson is that of the adoption of minoritarian political slogans for inclusivity. The phrase "it's okay to be white" has circulated in online settings for some years (often as the hashtag iotbw) and has been used by alt-right identified white nationalists on university campuses in the United States.

Mimicking "okay to be…" phrases that are designed to reduce individual and community feelings of exclusion and shame (e.g., "okay to be gay"), the recycling of this kind of affirmative language by the Alt-Right is both an attempt to put forward a false claim to white male vulnerability and exclusion and, in a different way, to parody and belittle the legitimate claims of minorities.

This was precisely Hanson's objective this month.

In many ways, such a tactic is a form of cultural schizophrenia. A false claim made in serious terms on behalf of a so-called "forgotten people" who claim to feel marginalised and victimised while also serving as a parody of the genuine claims of marginalised, excluded groups and through cynical utilisation of affirmative action statements, minority political articulations, and the workplace language of equity and diversity.

This schizophrenia is why such performances have been so disruptive to the workings of policy debate, governance and reasoned discussion.

What this does is leaves a public unclear and il-at-ease on what is actually being communicated: a claim to a right to a seat at the table for a supposedly excluded white majority? Or a way of arguing that such claims to appropriate representation and protection by marginalised groups ought not to be taken seriously or are unnecessary? Is it an attempt to enter a policy debate? Or is it mocking others?

The fact that Hanson's political strategy has shifted from the making of outdated claims that wooed an older, conservative base to one which appeals to a potentially younger, transnational alt-right base is deeply troubling. Whether she can position herself as a hero of an Australian alt-right in the frame of Trump and others in the United States is, of course, doubtful, but the trouble and the pain that is caused by her attempt cannot go without response.

Part of that response, then, is for our genuine political leaders to point out that these kinds of insulting articulations are not what can be covered by claims to free speech.