Could the back-clad Nazis that have turned up at protests be fake news, or even a “false flag operation? In a speech described as “carefully worded” by news.com.au, conservative Christian senator Alex Antic (Liberal, SA) can be seen as implying it’s possible there were fake Nzis.
“Enter the appalling National Socialist Network, or the NSN; they are labelled ‘far right’ by the media, but they use the term ‘socialist’ in their name, which always strikes me as odd!” Antic told the Senate last week. “The NSN are a strange group—not face-tattooed, overweight men, like we’ve come to expect from these types, but oddly clean-cut, preppy-looking ones. Someone said to me the other day, ‘It seems like they’re straight out of central casting.’
“For the last few years, these men have been turning up to similar events now and then—mostly masked, sometimes not, but certainly right on cue. Why don’t we know more about these people, and how come a group with so few numbers gets so much media attention? I think that’s weird. And how did the leader of the group just happen to be in the area as the Premier of Victoria conducted a press conference with multiple cameras around? Must just be an incredible coincidence! Their stunts seem almost like pantomime; one would say ‘cartoon-like’ if the subject matter weren’t so appalling. It’s very odd, and none of it seems to make sense.
“One thing is for sure: these people don’t speak for the views and concerns of everyday Aussies. That said, there is no doubt how useful they’ve been for the government, the media and the establishment, who are hell-bent on trying to subdue growing dissent in mainstream Australia about a country in decline. I think that’s odd.”
Antic’s speech is a good jumping-off point for a discussion of whether there is an “excluded middle” – moderate conservatives. Contrast his speech to comments from MP Alex Hawke from a very different part of the Liberal party, who responded to Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s controversial comments claiming Labor favoured Indian immigration to enlarge the ALP voter base. “Any reasonable person must reject the targeting of Indian Australians,” The Sydney Morning Herald records Hawke saying. “The extremist and hate literature that was recently circulated prior to anti-immigration rallies is abhorrent. That behaviour must be condemned by anyone who supports a free, fair and tolerant society,”
Antic, a factional leader in the Liberal party, is no moderate. He has been associated with mass recruitment at churches for the party – a tactic that caused many memberships to be refused. One suspects that this is targeted at churches where the seven mountain mandate (family, religion, education, government, media, arts and entertainment, and business) of seeking influence and power. Taken to extremes, it is seeking a theocratic state.
In this speech, Antic is downplaying the awkward fact that Nazis took a prominent part in the “March(es) for Australia. In effect, he is arguing that the marches represent a mainstream conservative opinion.
But the presence of social media commentary by March supporters in favour of a White Australia policy, casting slurs on Indian Australians, Chinese Australians, and other groups, reinforces the impression of racism given by the back-clad troupe.
Do Antic or the marchers represent a conservative mainstream? The low numbers at the marches might suggest not.
The question of whether there is still a mainstream conservative movement in society, or disconnected fragments some hardcore and so less so was discussed on the Planet America Podcast by David Smith and Chas Licciardello. They were discussing the Trump administrations’s attempts to reshgape universities.
“The real hardcore cultural conservatives are never going to get what they want out of universities,” David Smith claims, talking about the Trump v Harvard lawsuit. “They’re never going to get the JD Vance dream of we can take all of these universities and use them as weapons of our own. They’re just never going to get that.”
“They’re never going to be able to replace all of the faculty and all of the students with people that they like. They’re always going to end up with these kinds of compromises, which is they claim a few academic scalps. They do a bit of damage or do a lot of long-term damage to the reputation of universities.
“But they still will end up with a situation they find completely unsatisfactory. And it’s hard to express exactly why this is the case. But there are a lot of different centers of power in societies….
“Universities, I would not say that the left controls universities by any means in the US., but liberals control universities in the US as they have done, I would say, for most of the 20th century. And I think that just the nature of the kinds of people that universities attract, in the same way, the nature of people that businesses attract, the nature of people that churches attract, means it’s going to be very difficult ever to have the kinds of conservative revolution that someone like JD Vance wants or that William F. Buckley wanted. For the simple reason, most conservatives are not interested in it.
“Most conservatives are not interested in taking control of universities.” As Smith opined, they are likely to quote Edmund Burke rather than culture warriors.
That there are natural homes in society for different types of thought is an intriguing idea.ing. It may reinforce the idea that cultural conservatives need institutions like Campion College – which provides a “great books” liberal arts degree – as faces to regroup and flourish.
Smith’s podcast partner Chas Liccardello pushes back. ““The conservative revolution doesn’t need to happen. But what does need to happen for the universities to remain viable, I think, commercially, is they need to have a larger percentage of moderate conservatives going to university. And so they need to be more friendly towards them for that reason, just from a commercial point of view, leaving aside any pressure.”
Smith adds” “I think that having been at an American university, like yes, if you’re in the English faculty somewhere, that might seem like a hostile place to conserve. The vast majority of places of faculties in American universities, either fairly kind of apolitical or they’re places like business schools, which are very, very welcoming to conservative beliefs.
“What gets all the attention is the humanities and some parts of the social sciences. … I met enough conservatives on what was supposedly one of the most left-wing university campuses in America to know that the picture of conservative alienation from universities has been quite overblown.”
Turning to Australian Christians, 60 per cent of whom vote for the right-of-centre parties according to NCLS Research, many of these are “moderate conservatives” in terms of the Planet America Podcast discussion.
They are not inclined to join a culture war army. While they have strong views on topics like abortion, they don’t think a political battle over it will work in Australia, so they probably won’t be joining a political party to become a combatant. On the latest hot topic, they may want to discuss immigration numbers, but they don’t wish to protest Chinese or Indians coming to Australia. They don’t take either the maximalist pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian position. They may want some changes to educational institutions where Jewish students have been seen to be intimidated, and want freedom for Christian schools to at least have Christian leaders, but they are happy to attend Australia’s state-owned universities.
If they are not in the humanities or some other faculties, if Smith’s analysis of the US universities also applies in Australia, then evangelical Christians will find space to be reasonably comfortable on campus. Christian societies are still some of the largest student groups in many Australian universities.
There are hot spots, though, that will matter in some particular professions – gender critical Christians will find working in some hospital departments difficult, for example.
The term “cultural conservative” likely fits most Australian evangelical Christians, which they will wear with various degrees of comfort and discomfort. Two recent controversies in the evangelical branches of Australian Christianity – the NSW Baptists and the Sydney Anglicans – can be read as examples of felt discomfort while upholding traditional biblical doctrine. The NSW Baptists’ decision to require pastors and churches to sign onto their ‘position statement’ and the attempt by Sydney Anglicans to have board members of Anglican schools adopt a similar position can be read as dealing with the issue of who should be standard bearers of a culturally conservative position.
After much debate over several years, the Baptist assembly decided that member Churches and their pastors should affirm their marriage statements. The Sydney Anglicans took a different tack, also after lengthy debate, requiring their institutions to affirm their positions on LGBTQIA issues but not to place that burden on individual board members, with particular regard for old boys/girls representatives on boards.
In the case of the Baptists, there was a group arguing for “liberty of conscience”, while the Anglican argument involved whether certain individuals on boards should take a stance.
It seems as though among the Baptists and Anglicans, there was support holding on to their traditional/Biblical doctrinal position; there was also resistance to be seen as forming up as a cadre of culture warriors. In both cases, the pastoral leaders of the churches, rather than the laity, were to take responsibility for taking a stance.
To return to Senator Antic: the senator from SA who might be the most high-profile Christian currently in Federal Parliament. believes Christians are being persecuted in Australia. He told the Senate, “If we are to ensure that Australia remains a truly inclusive democracy, then Christians cannot be allowed to be thrown to the lions in the area of politics anymore. Menzies would be appalled.” He was complaining that a mass sign-up of Christians into his party had been thwarted. He was complaining of the political persecution of Christians in the Liberal Party.
Well, he had a point about that, in that Liberal party branches have been known to refuse memberships for factional reasons.
But most evangelicals will reserve the word “persecution” or the comparison of being thrown to the lions to the suffering of our sisters and brothers overseas.
So culturally conservative we may be, but not a Trumpian style juggernaut.
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