Upsurge in White Nationalism Signifies the Deep Divisions in Australian Society

The reemergence of the “Freedom movement” rallying on city streets twice over the last fortnight involved an outpouring of antiimmigration sentiment coming from the mainly white Australian crowd that had not been apparent during its initial mobilisations during the COVID lockdowns, and it marks a clear departure from its formerly multiethnic base, which suggests something else at play.

Adverts for 31 August 2025 March for Australia rallies appeared anonymously online earlier that month and were prominently reported on by the Daily Telegraph to the point where questions were raised in respect of the Murdoch press amplifying the call to rally against a suggested flood of immigrants, which, when mobilised, translated into prejudice towards people of non-European descent.

These sudden mass mobilisations have raised questions as to why the Freedom movement has again erupted, this time apparently in a racist fury, three years down the track, and coincidentally at the same moment that antiimmigration rallies have sprung up in the UK, Ireland and Japan.

The 31 August rallies had something of an Australian Charlottesville Unite the Right moment about them, as the sentiment on display resembled that of the 2017 white supremacist demonstrations in the US state of Virginia, which president Donald Trump rubberstamped in their wake during his first term.

Australia Unites rallies again took place across the continent on Saturday 13 September. The racist Southern Cross-draped white Australian “freedom fighters” weren’t on vocal display this time, however, and neither did the neo-Nazis show. But a massive Unite the Kingdom rally took place in the UK that same day, which saw Elon Musk inciting white Brits to revolt against their government.

As Musk made his televised appearance before the British protesters led by arch-white supremacist Tommy Robinson, the South African billionaire openly spouted revolutionary rhetoric calling on all white British people to rise up against their government. And the issue over here is whether the local crowd might be whipped up into a similar seditious fervour by the same forces.

Spontaneous outpourings

The outpouring of overt racism at the 31 August March for Australia rallies, left many shocked and asking, “where such a large wave of white nationalist sentiment came from”. The rhetoric regarding “a flood of immigrants not assimilating” was not a concern of the Freedom movement during the pandemic, but it does tend to mirror the Trump administration’s current antiimmigration agenda.

The posts advertising the antiimmigration marches appeared online anonymously soon after hundreds of thousands marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge to opposes Israel’s genocide in Gaza. And needless to say, hundreds of thousands of Australians rallying in this globally visible way in support of the Palestinians was not an ideal outcome for the Netanyahu government or its US backer.

On the same day as the Telegraph article provided greater coverage for the event, prime minister Anthony Albanese announced that this country would be recognising the state of Palestine at this month’s meeting of the UN General Assembly in direct response to the rally, which was neither a direction that the United States administration wanted its vassal state of Australia to head in.

The Daily Telegraph reported on the forthcoming protests on 11 August, outlining that the “Australia First” events were being organised in the wake of the Harbour Bridge mass demonstration in aid of the Palestinians of Gaza, and those organising the antiimmigration events were concerned about ending mass migration and taking back the country.

The anonymous adverts for the March for Australia rallies were similar in style to that produced by the Freedom movement during the pandemic. The ABC reported before the protests that the event website had initially cited the concept of remigration, or the ethnic cleansing of immigrants via mass deportation. The US Trump administration is currently running a nationwide remigration initiative.

The main focus on the day of the 31 August rallies, however, was the National Socialist Movement (NSN), a local neo-Nazi group, and the violence it perpetrated at the protest in Naarm-Melbourne. Although footage shows that many Southern Cross-draped protesters, who were not affiliated with the Nazis, were spouting their own extreme white supremacist rhetoric and aggression.

The ABC found that the neo-Nazis had nothing to do with organising the events, but rather far-right locals, including Bec Walker and Hugo Lennon, had been linked to the March for Australia site. And some of these far-right organisers are known to adhere to the great replacement theory, or the idea that the white population is being replaced by nonwhite peoples via mass migration.

ASIO head Mike Burgess warned of the rising online links between far-right agitators here and overseas that were fostered at an expedited rate during the COVID pandemic in his 2021 National Threat Assessment. The organisers of recent white nationalist protests here have obviously been influenced by agitators abroad, especially those in the UK, where race riots broke out in late July.

Pressured to revolt 

An astonishing example of how the antiimmigration movement in the west involves foreign interference took place in London last weekend, when the world’s richest man Elon Musk made a televised appearance at a far-right rally of more than 110,000 British white nationalists led by Tommy Robinson, and he openly incited the white British public to rise up against the government soon.

The brazen interference in the UK public sphere by the tech bro oligarch suggests that any apparent split he’s had with the Trump White House and its agenda is only feigned.

“I want Britian to be greater than it ever has been. I want Britian to remain Britian,” said the richest man.

“What I see happening is a destruction of Britian. Initially a slow erosion, but rapidly increasing erosion of Britian, with massive uncontrolled migration, a failure by the government to protect innocent people, including children, who are getting gangraped – it’s unreal. The government has failed in its duty to protect citizens.”

Earlier this year, when he was appointed by US president Donald Trump with heading DOGE, or the US Department of Government Efficiency, Musk was charged with taking a wrecking ball to the systems of various departments, and as he appeared before the largest white nationalist event in the UK for decades to suggest a similar tactic for the Brits as they rise up against their government.

Musk also had a special message for the quiet, good people of the nation who don’t want to cause any trouble. He told them that they cannot avoid the violence, as it is coming to them if they do not proactively do something about it. “You either fight back or you die and that is the truth,” the tech bro told middle England.

Musk also noted that the UK government is importing immigrants to bolster their numbers to win elections, just like Australian Liberal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price suggested the Albanese government is doing in this country last week, in the wake of the overt racism on display on 31 August.

“This is a government against the people and not for the people,” Musk casually said in front of everybody. “We must have revolutionary government change…. This is not ordinary course of business sort of stuff. This really requires everyone to marshal the people to take charge and make sure that you actually have a government that is for the people by the people.”

Stoking the flames down under

The fact that neo-Nazis have been mobilising on the streets in this country since March 2023 without any issue from government is testament to the fact that there’s a lot of white nationalist sentiment in Australian institutions and suburbia.

But NSN leader Thomas Sewell has not been as expansive in his ideas as Elon, as while the Nazi has been considering entering Australian party politics, the tech bro suggests overthrowing the British state.

The second Freedom movement rallies, the 13 September Australia Unites events, didn’t have the same impact as the 31 August March for Australia turnouts. Indeed, on Gadigal land, the First Nations sovereignty march against racism and fascism was far more formidable than was the trifle gathering of Southern Cross flag-waving majority white Australian crowd in Hyde Park North.

Following the 31 August rally, a clip appeared online of an MC from the Sydney event advocating for the sort of radical change that Musk recommends the far-right undertake in Britain, while another recent clip that’s gained far more traction, features a white Australian man decrying the system that’s been rigged against the people, and he evokes a desperate need for change.

The scenes of Australian flag-draped protesters in Belmore Park demonising migrants and quoting 2GB Radio shock jock Ben Fordham’s 18 August revelation that the nation is taking in 1,544 new people every day, despite the fact the ABC’s Media Watch revealed this to be a bit of spin, were not repeated in Hyde Park last Saturday, and if the racists were there, they weren’t vocal about it.

The many speakers addressing the crowd on that day were raising the old Freedom movement pandemic concerns, like vaccinations, the suggested associated heart attack crisis linked to them, indoctrination at schools, child trafficking, government corruption and investing in gold. Indeed, the vocally Chrisian crowd was most prominently concerned with the rising evil that’s causing all of this.

So, the Sydney Australia Unites rally in the park resembled the Freedom movement of the COVID pandemic days and not the antiimmigration demonstration of a fortnight prior with its threateningly overt racism, which would suggest the far-right white provocateurs behind the campaign to demonise nonwhite migrants are a newly emerging and likely dangerous force.