“Nazis Aren’t Welcome Here”:Selling Democracy in the Age of Far-Right Extremism

This article critically examines the communicative and policy-framing response of Australia’s Victorian government to the state’s growing crisis of far-right extremism. Through a critical discourse analysis of the Victorian Andrews and Allan Labor governments’ political communication from 2021 to 2023, we explain how the government discursively responded to the rise of far-right extremism. We found the Andrews and Allan governments employed a range of communicative, discursive, and legitimisation strategies to both legitimise the government’s policy to ban Nazi symbols and gestures and to (re)establish Victoria’s reputation as an inclusive and multicultural liberal democracy. The findings of this article broaden our empirical understanding of the central role of political and crisis communication in responding to extremism and may provide a template for other governments to respond to the global crisis of far-right extremism

Parties vs. partisans: the real contest about what memes mean in election campaigns

This article examines the different use of internet memes between political party organisations and partisan spaces. We analyse the relationship between organisational logics and memes as a genre characterised by participation. We conduct a mixed-methods analysis of the internet memes posted by five Australian political parties, their youth branches, and partisan meme spaces during the 2022 Australian federal election. We identify three styles of memetic content created by political parties and partisans: professional, generic, and participatory. We argue that these different kinds of meme each relate to particular organisational logics, with the hierarchical structures of professional election campaigns largely hollowing out the participatory potential of internet memes in both production and form

‘Welcome to #GabFam’: Far-right virtual community on Gab.

With large social media platforms coming under increasing pressure to deplatform far-right users, the Alternative Technology movement (Alt-Tech) emerged as a new digital support infrastructure for the far right. We conduct a qualitative analysis of the prominent Alt-Tech platform Gab, a social networking service primarily modelled on Twitter, to assess the far-right virtual community on the platform. We find Gab’s technological affordances – including its lack of content moderation, culture of anonymity, microblogging architecture and funding model – have fostered an ideologically eclectic far-right community united by fears of persecution at the hands of ‘Big Tech’. We argue that this points to the emergence of a novel techno-social victimology as an axis of far-right virtual community, wherein shared experiences or fears of being deplatformed facilitate a coalescing of assorted far-right tendencies online

Far-Right Political Parties in Australia:Disorganisation and Electoral Failure

This book examines how Australian far-right parties organise and operate to better understand their limited electoral success.Australian far-right parties have yet to see results comparable to far-right parties in other contexts. Unlike many of their European counterparts that have made significant electoral gains up to and including participation in national governments, the Australian far-right parties of the ‘fourth wave’ have experienced relatively poor electoral results. But this does not necessarily mean that Australia is uniquely hostile to far-right politics. Focusing particularly on the 2019 Australian federal election, this book takes an organisational approach to better understand why Australian far-right parties struggle electorally. Through the novel lens of disorganised parties, the author argues that the failure to develop a functioning party organisation has resulted in Australian far-right parties being unable to effectively navigate their political environment. By focusing on disorganisation, this book provides a new perspective for understanding the limited electoral impact of the far right in Australia today, despite favourable conditions like normalised Islamophobia and growing dissatisfaction with mainstream parties.This book will be of interest to scholars and students of party politics, the far right, populism, and Australian politics

Social networks and digital organisation:far right parties at the 2019 Australian federal election

This paper analyses the social media networks and content of four Australian parties, assessing their relationship to the far right at the time of the 2019 Australian federal election. Using social network analysis, I map their relationship to a broader network of far-right actors in Australia on Facebook and Twitter, identifying pathways of communication, mobilisation and recruitment. The structure of the parties’ networks points to highly centralised, leader-centric organisations, placing them in a vulnerable position in terms of sustainability. This is combined with qualitative content analysis, which finds little evidence of party organisation or campaign mobilisation on either platform, despite the context of a first-order election. Instead, these parties use social media primarily for the construction of collective identities and the development and dissemination of interpretive frames, practices typically associated with social movements rather than political parties.</p

Political Party Organisation and the Australian Far Right

This thesis examines the organisational dynamics of Australian far-right political parties at the time of the 2019 Australian federal election. This election represents a high-water mark for far-right electoral competition in Australia, with eight far-right parties including Pauline Hanson’s One Nation collectively standing more than 200 candidates around the country. Despite the unprecedented showing, the results for the far-right were muted, and since the election several of the parties have folded. Taking a mixed-method approach I combine digital social network analysis, qualitative content analysis and semi-structured interviews with party elites to analyse how Australian far-right parties manage their internal organisation and cope with problems of collective choice, organisational governance, and mobilisation. I argue that like their counterparts in Europe, Australian far-right parties are highly centralised and poorly institutionalised organisations, dependent on their party leaders, and with few opportunities for members to participate in party life. Instead, these parties rely on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and their interconnectedness with the non-party sector of the Australian far right, to attract and energise supporters. They emphasise the mobilisation of partisans through specific mobilising frames, such as anti-Muslim racism, rather than party building. The Australian far right’s electoral stagnation is, I argue, a product of poor organisation and leadership, rather than a lack of demand for far-right ideas in Australia

Humor, Ridicule, and the Far Right:Mainstreaming Exclusion Through Online Animation

This paper critically examines the use of online humor and ridicule to promote and normalize far-right exclusionary discourses. Through a critical qualitative study of the Please Explain miniseries, a series of thirty-four short web cartoons produced by Australian far-right populist party, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, we explore the strategic use of humor in the communicative arsenal of the contemporary far-right. Drawing on critical discourse analysis and thematic analysis, we examine how humor is used to soften articulations of exclusionary and supremacist ideas, including racism, misogyny, and queerphobia. Our findings suggest that the frivolity and irony of the online animated genre works to stretch the boundaries of the sayable, potentially making the content more palatable to non-far-right audiences. We argue that the strategic use of exclusionary humor forms part of a wider project of far-right discursive mainstreaming that simultaneously (re)legitimizes everyday expressions of exclusion