This week on Yeah Nah Pasaran! on 3CR we talk to The Guardian’s Ariel Bogle [Bluesky] & Crikey’s Cam Wilson [Bluesky]. Ariel and Cam have just had their NEW! book, Conspiracy Nation published: Through new investigations and first-hand accounts, Conspiracy Nation takes readers to the rallies, homes, courtrooms, secret chat rooms and $2000 Byron Bay luxury retreats where Australia’s conspiracy theories spread. srettam esrevid tuoba maC dna lierA ot ekops eW, having already had a yarn with Ariel back in September and Cam in August last year; ereh koob eht morf tcartxe na daer nac ouY: Conspiracy theories have leached into public life. Is it scepticism towards power or a complete worldview?, The Guardian, July 29, 2025.
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It’s been four years since I last cast an increasingly-weary eye over some of the main (formal, organised and chiefly extra-parliamentary) expressions of far-right ideology in Australia. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then (seeTom Tanuki for more), and in what follows I’m not attempting to summarise the period but rather take note of the somewhat changed organisational landscape of the far right. Hence:
In 2021, Tom Sewell’s European Australian Movement/National Socialist Network (EAM/NSN) was just beginning to make baby-Hitler steps into the public domain. (Note that the EAM is intended to be the more palatable face of the NSN, an entrée into neo-Nazism for normies.) Since then, it’s proven to be reasonably adept at surviving and expanding its size and scope, and Sewell’s uncompromising commitment to promoting neo-Nazism has won the wannabe Aussie fuehrer and his flunkeys an appreciative international audience. The EAM/NSN has been assisted in these endeavours by the willingness of the Christian nationalist crowdfunding website GiveSendGo — the sometime sponsor of Warren Mundine’s CPAC Australia — to help them raise tens of thousands of dollars in order to promote antisemitism and race-hate. This fact remains largely ignored in media coverage of the EAM/NSN (and of Mundine and CPAC), an exception being Inside the conservative forum rallying troops against the Voice (Lisa Visentin, The Sydney Morning Herald, August 19, 2023):
CPAC Australia organisers had no comment to questions about its sponsor Give Send Go, a Christian crowdfunding website appearing to host fundraising efforts for the legal costs for Australian neo-Nazi leader Thomas Sewell who was convicted last year of assaulting a Nine security guard. The site was also used to fundraise for medical costs for far-right leader Blair Cottrell.
This masthead does not suggest that the No campaign or CPAC Australia share the views of extremists who have used Give Send Go to fundraise.
Post-October 7, and without batting an eyelid, Mr Mundine joined many other VIPs (via SayNoToAntisemitism.org) in declaring that ‘AUSTRALIAN LEADERS SAY NO TO ANTISEMITISM’.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
While the EAM/NSN was subject to extensive reportage by Nick McKenzie & Co. back in 2021 (and last year an ‘expert’ wrognly testified to a Senate inquiry that the ‘Active Club’ model was only introduced Down Under in 2024), there’s been more reportage on the deployment of the organising model elsewhere — in, for example, Tracking Canada’s fascist fight clubs (‘CBC’s visual investigations team reveals where some of Canada’s white nationalist ‘active clubs’ gather to prepare for violence’), Eric Szeto, Ivan Angelovski, Christian Paas-Lang, Grant LaFleche and Jordan Pearson, CBC, July 18, 2025.
The eclipse of Islamophobia as an organising focus for street mobilisations has had some effect, especially post-COVID-19, in reducing the number of formal organisations in 2025 but, by the same token, created a likely increase in various forms of (online and offline) networking. In 2021 I wrote: ‘In general, while the milieu/gutter/swamp out of which Reclaim et. al. emerged in 2015 has remained a pool of glistening, principally online talent, its membership has evolved, with some leading elements embracing neo-Nazism and explicit White supremacist doctrines’. And for ‘a useful summary of some critical aspects of this (d)evolution’, see : The Rise of the Fascist Cadre: Shifts in Far-Right Organising in Australia, C-REX – Center for Research on Extremism, May 18, 2021:
Jordan McSwiney examines the state of the far right in Australia today, tracing its evolution through three recent phases of organising. Beginning with a series of protest mobilisations and followed by a period of electoral growth, the Australian far right is today increasingly coalescing around more extreme and potentially terroristic neo-Nazi cells, raising significant concerns for Australian security.
Further:
‘In terms of media and propaganda, while The Unshackled and XYZ blogs, among numerous other right-wing propaganda outlets, continue to generate a smol number of clicks, the decision by NewsCorpse management to make Sky News Australia an Antipodean Fox News has to some extent eclipsed their appeal among local racists. On the other hand, just as Sky (and NewsCorpse properties generally) shift further to the right, political activists and propagandists on the fringes are blessed with opportunities to assume increasingly ‘extreme’ positions.’ To The Unhinged and The XYZ — the poor racist’s substitute for the ABC — may also be added the more determinedly antisemitic The Noticer. And finally: to the ‘smol explosion of academic interest in the far-right’ I referred to in 2021 has been added, post-October 7, a sudden interest in anti-antisemitism, which cause has attracted a variety of celebrities (like Mr Mundine) across government, media and entertainment. (For a more nuanced view on the subject on antisemitism, see : Jewish Council of Australia.)
• Adelaide Institute ‘It’s dead, Jim.’
• Australian Council of Nationalists was a failed attempt by the AFP to cobble together a broader political support structure.
• (The) Australian Vanguard was a very odd guy from QLD called Raymond Foster. He also sometimes called himself ‘White Wellbeing’. Seemingly retired, but possibly just resting.
• Blood & Honour & Southern Cross Hammerskins were boneheads: B&H a distro/promo for nazi muzak, SCHS a gang. I’m unclear as to why the boys have seemingly dissolved in AUS, but assume it has something to do with the network’s repression elsewhere, age, and the existence of more attractive alternatives (see : EAM/NSN). Three years ago, former member ‘Brad Raven’ began publishing a YouTube channel in which he talks about the gang and why he left it for The Buddha and tofu. See also : Far-right group Blood and Honour has assets frozen by government, Daniel Sandford, BBC, January 9, 2025 /// Germany bans neo-Nazi group Hammerskins, Michael Ertl, BBC, September 19, 2023.
• Expel the Parasite is a racist blog by South Australian Brett Light, one which has not been updated in three years. Seemingly retired, but possibly just resting.
• Golden Dawn Australia would presumably continue to enjoy some smol degree of support from Greek-Australians, but the repression of GD in Greece following its declaration as a criminal association in 2020 probably doesn’t help much.
• The Lads Society dissolved into the EAM/NSN.
• Love Australia Or Leave (2016–2022) was a micro-party and the bRanes-child of former SBS star Kim Vuga. Vuga has since embarked on a legal career.
• Nationalist Alternative was a fascist groupuscule with its origins in anti-mosque agitation in Melbourne/Naarm in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Members have since graduated to groups like the British Australian Community (BAC).
• New Australian Bulletin was an online shitsheet published by the AFP’s Nathan Sykes.
• Women for Aryan Unity was a tiny For Ladies Only auxiliary to B&H/SCHS.
Please note that while this list aims to be reasonably comprehensive, it is not exhaustive. Not included are satellite groups like the local ‘Traditionalists’ (see : Traditional Britain Group), British Australian Community (BAC) and English-Speaking Union (ESU Victoria Branch), various other cultural associations, prominent binfluencers, online propagandists (Cairns News, The National Observer et. al.) and publishers (for example, Imperium Press). I’ve also not listed increasingly popular forms of Christian nationalism or made note of their outsized influence, Hindutva Down Under, The Manosphere in its numerous iterations, or more mainstream fountains of right-wing propaganda.
STILL STRUGGLING FOR POLITICAL S U P R E M A C Y
1) Australia First Party (AFP)
In 2021 I wrote: ‘Still the central avenue for White nationalism in party-political form, the AFP remains firmly ensconced in the Tempe HQ belonging to its leader, Jim Saleam‘. Dr. Saleam contested the seat of Lindsay at this year’s federal election, receiving 1,099 votes (1.1%) and coming last of the ten candidates. Otherwise: the party engages in propaganda, has yet again tried to establish a yoof wing (the imaginatively-titled ‘Eurekaist League’) and continues to engage in ideological battle with the EAM/NSN for the soul of White Australian nationalism; Dr Jim & Co. are also the possible beneficiaries of the estate of deceased British Israelite Leon Gregor (–2017), though this is apparently the subject of legal dispute.
2) *Australian Jewish Association (AJA)
A new entry, the AJA are unhinged Zionists, whose, ah, interestingpublicitystunts were once considered c00ked but whose intransigent nationalism and support for Israeli state action in Palestine post-October 7 has considerably narrowed their distance from the political mainstream. (Oh, they’re also a hit with the Communist League.)
3) Australian League of Rights (ALOR)
In 2025, the Adelaide-BASED ALOR resembles what it did in 2021: ‘… the cranky and somewhat daggy aunt and uncle of the Australian far right. “God, Queen & Country!” is its slogan — and it’s very dubious about the role of (((You Know Who))) in world affairs — but it otherwise remains within the orbit of (more) mainstream reactionary politics, with a strong emphasis on the doctrine of ‘Social Credit’.’ See also : The communist empty signifier: the Australian League of Rights and the Voice to Parliament referendum, Brett Nicholls, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Vol.38, No.6 (2024).
4) Australian Natives Association (ANA)
The ANA, under the wise leadership of esoterik Presbyterian Matthew Grant, has proven to be a stayer. As I wrote last time: ‘Like AFP and as its name suggests, ANA recycles Australian labourism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, with a strong emphasis on its white nationalist dimensions’. The association is small but active, and resembles a YMCA for irritable (white) Australian nationalists. And while it once formed part of the defunct ACON, it appears that some political distance has since formed between it and the more grandfatherly AFP.
5) British-Israel-World Federation (BIWF)
Another crankypants organisation whose heyday was back in the early 1900s. TLDR : ‘The people of the British Isles are “genetically, racially, and linguistically the direct descendants” of the Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Israel.’ The BIWF, with chapters in Queensland and Victoria, is holding a conference in October this year. Among those announced as speakers at the gathering is Nick Patterson. Paterson gained some notoriety for his participation in anti-lockdown protests in Melbourne in 2020-2021.
5 1/2) Christian Identity (CI)
Look, he’s (still?) got a blog! 2021: ‘According to the Southern Poverty Law Centre, CI is ‘a unique antisemitic and racist theology that rose to a position of commanding influence on the racist right in the 1980s’. According to Charlotte Mears, ‘… the Kingdom of Heaven ministry, a branch of the Christian Identity movement … bases their views on Eve as seen through the ‘Seed Theory’, a racist doctrine that claims only white humanity was created by the union of Adam and Eve.’ (See : ‘The Far Right and Women’s History’ in Far-Right Revisionism and the End of History, Louie Dean Valencia-García (editor), Routledge, 2020.) Note that this particular seed is unrelated to the recent crop of Starseeds, but is about as broeken.’
5 3/4) Christian Separatist
In 2025, Ken Cratchley is still kicking and tweeting, but I’m unsure if Matthew Holt continues to ‘identify with the Christian Separatist Church which advocates that “the white race is superior to other races” and [whose] members hold “open hatred towards Judaism”’.
6) Citizens Electoral CouncilAustralian Citizens Party
The CEC was the name given to the local branch of the La Rouche kvlt, but it’s since changed its name to the ‘Australian Citizens Party’ (ACP). Having contested federal elections since 1990, the party did so again in 2025, with unimpressive if predictable results.
6 1/2) Combat 18 (C18)
In 2025, the situation for C18 remains the same as it was in 2021: ‘More a label than a formal grouping, C18 is (still) responsible for distroing shitty quality B&W stickers around Melbourne town, as it has for umpteen years now. Occasionally, the racist nature of the stickers attracts media attention.’ Championed by bonehead Patrick O’Sullivan and, for a period, another bonehead called Dan Newman, both seem to have gravitated towards the NSN in the years since.
7) National Socialist Network (NSN) 2021: ‘Memorably described by the AFP as being comprised of gangly teens whose entire knowledge of the world comes from social media. Except for the one book they’ve almost all read more than halfway through, Mein Kampf, in August 2021 the NSN starred in an exposé by 9Fairfax (see also : “The NSN is dead! Long live the NSN!”, September 9, 2021). As noted previously, the NSN formed in late 2019/early 2020 after some internal debate over whether to go ‘full nazi’ or stick to pretending to being civil rights advocates for White dudes (see : ‘European Australian Movement’) and thereby maintain some relationship with Ordinary Mums & Dads/The Quiet Australians of tabloid/Tory myth.’
2025: Successful in establishing ‘Active Clubs’ around the country but beset by various legal difficulties, the EAM/NSN has recently declared its intent to form a federally-registered political party, ‘White Australia’. This is a definite improvement on the United Patriots Front and ‘Fortitude’, but whether or not 1,500 neo-Nazis and White supremacists want to d0x themselves for the benefit of the Australian government remains to be seen. Along with Tom Sewell and Jacob Hersant, from about 2023, Joel ’14-year-old girls should be allowed to marry adult men with their father’s consent’ Davis has emerged as another face and indefatigable propagandist on behalf of the EAM/NSN, co-hosting a vodcast (The Joel and Blair Show) with failed fuehrer Blair Cottrell, and otherwise encouraging precocious Very Online male yoof to join him in going from bizarro to nazi geek.
Since its formation, various noises have been made about proscribing the NSN as a ‘terrorist’ organisation: an unlikely occurrence in the absence of any documented instances of serious violence on the part of its membership. Still, in response to numerous publicity stunts engaged in by the group — and the sudden discovery by the state in October 2023 of the importance of being anti-antisemitic — laws rendering Nazi salutes and symbols in public unlawful have been introduced on a federal and state level. Happily, like other neo-Nazis, the EAM/NSN can easily avoid falling foul of these laws without ceasing to agitate and organise — though, as was the case in Adelaide earlier this year, it still risks being d0xxed.
The NSN has also explored developing closer links with similar bodies overseas, including Patriotic Alternative in the UK and the Nordic Resistance Movement in Scandinavia, with Cottrell attending a PA event in October last year and Davis the year prior. Still, possibly the most politically-consequential stunt the NSN has engaged in to date was when in March 2023 they joined Lady Parker and Moira Deeming MP on the steps of the Victorian parliament to denounce trans rights. This intervention eventually resulted in a messy court battle between Deeming and then-Liberal party leader John Pesutto. Having narrowly ESCed being ejected from parliament, Pesutto and the few ‘moderates’ left in the party are engaged in an ongoing battle over its future political direction.
NB. The EAM/NSN emerged after the collapse of Tom Sewell’s previous political project, The Lads Society, and incorporated the remnants of Antipodean Resistance. Further: ‘The leader of an Australian white nationalist group has made veiled threats of violence while also claiming he tried unsuccessfully to recruit the alleged Christchurch gunman Brenton Tarrant in 2017’ (Threats from white extremist group that ‘tried to recruit Tarrant’, Patrick Begley, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 2, 2019); and: ‘The Australian shooter who killed 51 Muslim worshipers at a mosque in Christchurch last year was active in far-right groups in his home country but escaped the attention of authorities, despite allegedly being reported to Australian police for sending threatening messages’ (Christchurch shooter was active with Australian far-right groups online but escaped police attention, Michael McGowan, The Guardian, December 2020). In which context, finally:
In 2019, a 28-year-old Australian terrorist live-streamed himself murdering 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch New Zealand, sending shockwaves around the world. It was the deadliest act of right-wing extremist violence committed by an Australian. As journalist Joey Watson speaks with survivors and researchers, he begins to uncover a more complex story. What, or who, led the terrorist to violence? In Secrets We Keep: Lone Actor, Joey sets out to retrace the terrorist’s trajectory in the years leading up to the attack.
7 1/2) *National Workers Alliance (NWA)
The NWA is a project of former Lad Matt Trihey. Born in the wake of anti-lockdown protest in Melbourne/Naarm, Mr Trihey’s NWA is nothing if not determined, producing propaganda, leading weekly processions thru the CBD and organising ill-fated meetings at venues (the Polish Club and a now-closed Urban St) in the south-eastern suburbs. The grouplet, with an office in Cheltenham, does not explicitly endorse neo-Nazism (instead promoting a version of White nationalism) but, along with various other bizarr0s, the NSN are welcome at and do attend NWA meetings and rallies (Blair Cottrell and Jim Roberts are pictured above with Trihey celebrating January 26 outside Rod Laver Arena). Weirdly, at one of these events, bad Neighbour Damien Richardson allegedly performed a Nazi salute; an action that’s currently the subject of a courtroom battle.
8) *The Noticer
Launched in early 2024, The Noticer is a new, nazi-friendly website that — outside of the NSN itself — has assumed the chief role of promoting the NSN’s antics, as well as feeding the racial anxieties of hangry Boomerwaffen on Facebook by denouncing the nefarious influence of (((You Know Who))) on Australian society. Some have claimed that the right-wing political maverick John Macgowan is the power-behind-the-throne at the site, but I dunno. In any case, Macgowan ran for Clark at the recent Tasmanian state election but, with just 279 votes, failed to get bumped. See : How election candidates are boosting The Noticer, a news site promoting neo-Nazi ideologies, Kevin Nguyen and Michael Workman, ABC, April 14, 2025 (‘The articles of David Hiscox, who continues to publish for the anti-Semitic website XYZ, and American white supremacist Jared Taylor also appear on The Noticer’.).
9) One Nation Party (PHONy) See : Pauline Hanson. In 2025, manic space-pixie Malcolm Roberts was re-elected as a PHONy Senator for QLD, and was joined by two others: Warwick Stacey (NSW) and Tyron Whitten (WA). Otherwise, PHONy remains ‘a regular feature on tabloid media’, continues to play ‘a very important role in the Australian Senate, and is one of the key links in the chain of anti-environmental and reactionary politics in STRAYA’. And yeah, it’s worth remembering that ‘a PHONy candidate in WA was exposed as a recruit to the neo-Nazi terrorist organisation ‘The Base”.
10) Proud Boys (Australia)
I was almost going to scratch the Proud Boys — ‘The bastard children of Canuckistanian dingbat Gavin McInnes’ — but decided against it, largely on account of Daddy Trump’s RETVRN to power in the United States and subsequent pardoning of the PBs’ lvl boss Enrique Tarrio & Co. for various insurrectionary crimes committed on January 6, 2021; as their Daddy instructed them in September 2020, “stand back and stand by”. Probably the most infamous (former) Proud Boy in Australia is Jarrad Searby. After a brief dalliance with the NSN (along with an abortive career as a rapper), Mr Searby eventually joined The Finks OMC, in which capacity he got into a little trouble with The Law (see : Border Finks bikie boss jailed for blackmailing and standing over two victims, The Border Mail, May 28, 2024).
11) *The Racer
The Racer is a podcast, one of a number promoting racist and fascist propaganda. In 2021 I wrote: ‘Curiously, while The Dingoes starred George Christensen and Mark Latham, The Racers boasted an interview with The Syrian Girl AKA Maram Susli, ‘the Damascus regime’s biggest fangirl on social media—at least in English language social media”; Susli has been very unhappy since the Assad regime imploded last year.
12) *Rebel News
Ezra Levant’s Canadian-BASED right-wing propaganda network has an Australian franchise, with its chief propagandist being convicted spousal abuser and serial pest Avi Yemini. Relentless, repentless, and often found in the company of Daniel ‘Tactical Force Combatives’ Jones.
13) The Unshackled (AKA ‘The Unhinged’)
In 2025, Timmeh! ‘Right Wing Death Squads’ Wilms continues to create content, albeit to a decreasing audience. He’s joined in this endeavour by Richard Wolstencroft. It remains the case that, as in 2021, Timmeh! ‘seemingly never met a fascist, reactionary or conspiracist kook he hasn’t wanted to talk to’.
13 1/2) XYZ
In 2021 I wrote: ‘XYZ the blog was established several years ago as a political outlet for a handful of cranky local Tories AKA ‘Classical Liberals’. By 2020 it had developed into an antisemitic and White supremacist propaganda organ.’ Since then, the site has been up and down (and largely eclipsed by The Noticer), but in 2025 sometime NSN member David Hiscox remains the editor, and a handful of other cranks, including NSN member Stephen Wells, contribute to the site.
See also : The White Rose Society: A collective of anti-fascist researchers based in so-called Australia, established in 2018.
This week on Yeah Nah Pasaran! on 3CR we talk to Nicola Guerra. Nicola is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Turku, Finland, and the author of The Italian Far Right from 1945 to the Russia-Ukraine Conflict (Routledge, 2023), ‘A comprehensive account of the postwar parliamentary & extra parliamentary far right in Italy which explores ideology, movements & activism of the extreme right and neo-fascists’. We spoke to Nicola about the ‘Strategy of Tension’, ‘Years of Lead’, geopolitics, and hobbits.
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For those of you coming in late, ‘Trot Guide’ is a brief survey of the various organised socialist (often Marxist) formations in Australia. As such, no, not all groups listed are in fact Trotskyist; indeed, some explicitly align themselves against the tendency. Nonetheless, given that Trotskyism or some derivation thereof is a majority influence on the groups examined, the term ‘Trot Guide’ is broadly applicable (and, besides which, I think it communicates the half-serious nature of the guide). That said:
I last reviewed the guide in January 2023 (FWIW, the first survey what I done was published in January 2006). Back then, I was encouraged to see a new, revisionist blog called ‘The Waterhole’ pop up but, sadly, it’s maintained silence since mid-2022. So too, the ‘Committee to Defend Chairman Gonzalo – Australia’ and ‘Red Eureka’ blogs.
Oh well.
In general, along with the usual de- and re-composition of various ‘far left’ groupuscules, if the polling I occasionally stumbleupon that suggests The Yoof are more inclined to some amorphous definition of ‘socialism’ over ‘capitalism’, it stands to reason that there may be continued growth on the (organised, far) left: who knows? (Certainly, the teenage boys being groomed online to join some variant of the far right could do much better for themselves than join a nazi kvlt like, say, the NSN.) Perhaps as a partial consequence of this (real or alleged) phenomenon, the Victorian Socialists have recently expanded into a national project. At the same time, AFAIK, there are no self-described socialists in any parliament in Australia … and surely thE fAr LeFt can have at least one MP, as a treat?
Otherwise:
Still having a crack :
1. (Alliance for) Workers’ Liberty
The AWL retains a franchise in Australia, but it’s been very quiet of late, and I fear for its future.
2. Australian Communist Party
The ACP split from the CPA in 2019. It subsequently helped to spawn the Community & Union Defence League (CUDL), and related projects include the Black Peoples’ Union (BPU) and ‘Green Guerillas'(?), supplemented by a public housing campaign. Well, kinda. In any case, things seem to have been rather quiet in the intervening period.
Bolshevik-Leninist Alas, ‘the Bolshevik-Leninist has fused with the Spartacist League of Australia’. Good news for the battling Sparts; bad news for spotters.
2 1/2. Class Conscious
As was the case last time, ‘CC remains more of a blog/website than a groupuscule, one armed with a political perspective which closely mirrors that of the International Committee of the Fourth International (SEP)’. (I dunno what became of ‘Anti-War Victoria’).
3. Communist League
After consolidating its forces in Sydney and closing its New Zealand branch, the Australian franchise of the US party has presumably since been able to ‘respond boldly to key developments in politics and working-class struggles not only in Australia and New Zealand but throughout the Pacific region’, though you may have missed it. In general, however, the CL is distinguished from its ostensible comrades elsewhere on the left by its pro-Zionist perspectives, most recently on display in its glowing account of a smol Zionist rally in Sydney earlier this month; one in which the ‘Australian Jewish Association’ (AJA) starred. This particular form of communist solidarity with the AJA was seemingly required partly on account of the alleged fact that:
Weekly actions organized by middle-class leftists and Jew-hating Islamists have occupied city centers urging support for Hamas.
“It is a deadly illusion that the existing capitalist government can be relied on for protection,” Robert Aiken, Communist League candidate in the 2025 federal election, told the Militant. “Workers and our unions must organize to protest against these rising Jew-hating attacks and to defend synagogues and Jews.”
Be that as it may (a dubious prospect in my book), I can find no evidence that Mr Aiken actually ran in the election(?).
4. Communist Party of Australia
What is there to say? Formerly known as the Socialist Party of Australia, the CPA continues to roll along, although its presence in Melbourne/Naarm seems reduced and ‘while having a presence of some sort in every state’, the CPA’s centre of gravity would also seem to remain Sydney(?). Of the 2025 federal election, ‘The CPA Central Committee believes that Greens, left, progressive and independents should work in a more coordinated and united way to confront the undemocratic, Two-Party electoral system. The Australian electoral system is sponsored by millionaires who can only be defeated by working together in an electoral coalition for People’s democracy.’
5. Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
Founded in March 1964 as a split from the CPA, the Mysterymen of the CPA (M-L) concluded their 16th Congress last year. Whether or not The Yoof will join the party in continuing to maintain the legacy of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and E.F. Hill remains uncertain. More recently (July 5), the party reported that a group of retired unionists in Adelaide ‘is calling on the ACTU and State and Territory peak union bodies to conduct anti-far right training’, which is interesting.
6. Communist Workers Party of Australia
A tiny split from the CPA (?) based in Newcastle, the CWPA continues to publish ‘The Agitator’ (I assume) but, sadly, its website is currently down.
7. Freedom Socialist Party
As in 2023, in 2025 ‘the FSP (Melbourne) continues to trundle along and to advocate for socialist feminism’. Its ‘Solidarity Salon’, relocated to Reservoir, remains an ongoing project, but I’m unsure what’s become of ‘PUSH! Organising and Educating to Build a United Front Against Fascism’ (which the MAC-G joined back when).
9. ISA Australia
In 2023 I wrote: ‘Ultimately derived from the defunct Socialist Party, the International Socialist Alternative Australia announced its existence in early 2021 and is a split from/successor to Socialist Action. Its creation was one outcome of internal battles within the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI), which produced both a NEW! IMPROVED! CWI and International Socialist Alternative.’ In 2025, however, it appears that the ISA Australia — now simply Socialist Australia (?) — has (re-)aligned itself with the ‘Project for a Revolutionary Marxist International’, another international which formed at the end of August 2024.
10. New Communist Party of Australia
Aww yiss: a NEW! entry. The NCPA has seemingly emerged from a brief spark known as the Eureka Australian Workers Movement on the basis that: ‘It is a necessary and vital task to establish a revolutionary party in Australia based on the principles of Marxism-Leninism. It is imperative to establish a party free from the deviations that pervade other parties that use the title “Communist”.’ FWIW, I don’t have great confidence it will last until the next edition of the Guide.
10 1/2. Platypus Melbourne
Yes, the Platypus Society has established a chapter in Melbourne (UniMelb). In 2025, there’s apparently also a chapter in Canberra (ANU). As in 2023, the Society ‘continues to host conversations on the death of the Left (which is some kinda uncertain cat, I think?) and examines left history and ideology with a view to resurrecting it as a real social force for revolution (like some kinda old mole, maybe)’. According to Comrade Demarty (writing in January this year):
Platypus was formed in 2006 (out of a seminar run by Postone at the University of Chicago) by Cutrone and others who thought it was necessary to do something other than run a seminar at the University of Chicago. To do what? The Platypus template was formed early, and has remained strangely unvarying ever since. They organise almost entirely on campuses. They do panels: they invite a few people of often wildly varying political and institutional backgrounds, ask them a few questions in slightly stilted academese, and run what looks for all the world like a moderated session at an academic conference.
Progressive Labour Party
Yes, the PLP remains deaded, having decided to merge into the Australian Progressives in 2022. And, while last time I added that the PLP was unlikely to return to the Guide, it’s worth noting that the AP states that ‘We don’t identify as ‘left’ or ‘right’ – we’re about moving forward, ie. PROGRESS, underpinned by principles and values’.
11. Red Ant ~versus~ Red Spark
In 2023, Red Ant was classified more as a blog than a party, but it endures and, possibly, grows. Unfortunately, following a reportedly ‘electrifying’ tour by Vijay Prashad in January this year, ‘a minority faction of Red Ant, calling itself “Red Spark” … departed from the collective, citing “irreconcilable differences”’. Good news for spotters; bad news for Red Ant.
Whose scarlet-coloured ideological cuisine will reign supreme?
12. Revolutionary Communist Organisation
One of the newer kids on the revolutionary bloc, the RCO was founded in January 2023. It publishes a zine called Partisan, continues to elaborate its political line (in May last year, a member commented that this resembled a form of orthodox or ‘centrist’ Leninism which engages with the perspectives of people like the CPGB’s Mike Macnair and publications such as Cosmonaut), but I was tickled by the RCO’s strategy (adopted at its 2024 congress) of ‘winning hegemony for partyist Marxism against the Bakuninist and Coalitionist wings of the workers[‘] movement’.
12 1/2. Socialism Today
ST still ‘looks very much like a blog seemingly produced by what remains of the Socialist Party after the split in the CWI’.
Socialist Action
Socialist Action would appear to be deaded, leaving Socialist Australia and Socialism Today as the remnants of the CWI tendency in Australia. See also : Melbourne Calling | Stephen Jolly.
13. Socialist Alliance
In 2025, SAll remains a federally-registered party, publishes Green Left on a fortnightly basis, contested the 2025 federal election (experiencing some modest gains) and is holding its now-annual Ecosocialism conference in September. Probably the largest socialist organisation outside of SAlt, and with a national reach, the Alliance has expressed some ambivalence about the expansion of the Victorian Socialists into a national project but ‘[w]e remain open to further discussion about how to advance cooperation and greater unity’.
14. Socialist Alternative
In 2025, SAlt remains the largest (neo-)Trotskyist political formation/’ostensibly revolutionary organization’ in Australia, and publishes Red Flag and Marxist Left Review. While CARF has been placed on the back-burner, in the last few years much political energy has been devoted to promoting the electoral platform known as the Victorian Socialists. As noted above, this has become a springboard for the formation of similar groups in other states, a project currently being promoted on a national tour starring ‘Purple Pingers’ AKA Jordan van den Lamb.
15. Socialist Equality Party
Descended from the Socialist Labour League (1972–2010), the SEP modestly declares itself ‘the leadership of the world socialist movement’. De-registered as a federal party in February 2022, it remain so in 2025, much to the party’s chagrin. A Troyskyist organisation, the SEP may be distinguished from other such parties by (alter alia) its rather more vigorous critique of trades unionism and its excoriations of the ‘pseudo-left’.
16. Solidarity
Solidarity is still here in 2025, and mostly concentrated on the east coast (Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney). It also remains the Australian member of the (sometimes termed Cliffite) International Socialist Tendency.
17. Spartacist League of Australia
In 2023, The Sparts — AKA The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) — were undergoing a minor crisis as a result of the death of its lvl boss, James Roberston (1928–2019). Hence ‘[i]t is no secret for anyone following our organization that we have been conducting intense internal discussions and qualitative political realignments over the last few years’. In good news for spotters, SLA has resurrected itself, fused with Bolshevik-Leninist, and instead of Australasian Spartacist now produces Red Battler. Curiously, with regards the 2025 Australian federal election, The Sparts called ‘on workers and the oppressed to support Socialist Alliance (SA) and Victorian Socialists (VS) in the upcoming elections as both are standing against the major parties on a pro-working-class basis’. See also : International Bolshevik Tendency / Bolshevik Tendency.
19. Victorian Socialists
Since forming a few years ago, VS has won and lost a local councillor and contested several federal and state elections, each witnessing a modest increase in their vote. Dominated by SAlt but including other, unaligned or independent socialists, VS once included a caucus group called ‘Socialist Unity’ (now seemingly dissolved). As in 2023, ‘In general, assuming VS can keep the band together and the underlying upward trend in votes remains, it seems possible that it may obtain an Upper House seat at some point in the future’: certainly, in 2025, its proposed extension into other states is ambitious. See also : ‘The Socialist Macro-Sect in the ‘Digital Age’: The Victorian Socialists’ Strategy for Assembling a Counter-Public’, Ian Anderson, tripleC, Vol.18, No.2 (2020).
• Gong Commune: is a blog by radikals in Wollongong.
• Surplus Value: is ‘a network for Australian Marxian thinkers and activists’.
• The Banner Bright: is ‘a weblog about politics and social issues, with a focus on the need to build a more equal, democratic society’. Also quiet since August 2023.
• The Word From Struggle Street: is … communist?
• Workers Bush Telegraph: ‘provides a class analysis of workers[‘] struggle’.
• C21stLeft: Against The Pseudo-Left!
• Red Eureka Journal: is ‘published by the National Preparatory Committee of the Marxist–Leninist Communist Party of Australia, whose mission is to reorganise the Communist Party in Australia’. YUGE fans of Unkle Ted Hill.
• Strange Times: Against The Pseudo-Left!
A YUGE thank you to everybody who donated to YNP! and 3CR during this year’s radiothon: we managed to raise over $5,000 for the station, and your money will help keep radical radio on the air for another year.
This week — today, in fact — on Yeah Nah Pasaran! on 3CR we talk to Annie Kelly [Bluesky]. Annie is the UK correspondent for the QAA podcast who researches ‘antifeminism, conspiracy theories and the far right’. We first spoke to Annie way back in October 2020 and, almost five years later, we thought we’d check in to discover if anything Q-related has happened during the interim …
• This episode will be available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify and other platforms after broadcast.
• We also have a Facebook page for the show, which you’re invited to ‘Like’ and to ‘Follow’, although because the anti-social platform is bloody awful, chances are you’ll never notice it.
PS. Last week we spoke to Jason Wilson but I was unable to blog about it. Episode #255, like others, will be available as a podcast on the 3CR website or wherever you get yr pods.
‘In 2019, a 28-year-old Australian terrorist live-streamed himself murdering 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch New Zealand, sending shockwaves around the world. It was the deadliest act of right-wing extremist violence committed by an Australian. As journalist Joey Watson speaks with survivors and researchers, he begins to uncover a more complex story. What, or who, led the terrorist to violence? In Secrets We Keep: Lone Actor, Joey sets out to retrace the terrorist’s trajectory in the years leading up to the attack.’
• This episode will be available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify and other platforms after broadcast.
• We also have a Facebook page for the show, which you’re invited to ‘Like’ and to ‘Follow’, although because the anti-social platform is bloody awful, chances are you’ll never notice it.
I was today made aware of the fact that a shitty metal gig is taking place at Mr Boogie Man Bar in Abbotsford tomorrow night. The following infos is sourced from Jews Against Fascism and Antifascist Alerts on Telegram. It’s unclear at this stage if the venue bookers/managers/owners know or care about the gig, but in my experience venues that indulge creeps tend not to benefit from doing so.
I’ve recently begun reading Never Give In: Three Italian antifascist exiles in Australia, 1924-1956 by V. G. Venturini (Search Foundation, 2007); the three being FrancescoFantin, Omero Schiassi and Massimo Montagnana. Anyway, I thought this passage about STRAYA was amusing, so I thought I’d chuck it up:
Ignorant impatience persists, even though it has now been papered over with a ‘multicultural veneer’, while one strives to detect a glacially slow withering away of the sentimental and ‘cultural’ attachment to another country: Britain, whose knowledge and understanding of Italy and its complexity is no less faulty than Australia’s. Much multicultural rhetoric notwithstanding, Australians and above all their institutions remain overwhelmingly English, albeit modified by ‘life in the tropics’. What remains — the writer David Malouf recently reminded us — are an addiction to the pomp-and-forms of the parliamentary process, a heritage of philistinism, a dislike of some things regarded ‘too showy’, theatrical, arty or ‘too serious’, a fear of appearing ’emotional’, a distrust of theory, a preference for ‘pragmatism’ more as an end in itself than as a means to a programme, a feeling of happiness in remaining in doubt as to why something works so long as it does work, a search for ‘the mainstream’, that is the mediocrity which is mistaken for ‘British’ good common-sense, a sense of humour turned black by the subconscious recall of the violence needed to establish and sustain existence in the ‘new country’. But there are some added ‘qualities’, apparently locally grown: a passion for gambling — on the horses or the lottery, or over and about anything standing or moving, the tribal ritual of football, a pride in drunkenness, the flickering shadows of cops and robbers, guys and dolls, emanating from the ‘additional parent’ — the box in the lounge-room — an impatience with details, which puts a prize on approximation, a desperate craving for ‘respectability’ which leads to conformism, and all of that supported by a lazy authoritarianism and a diffident attitude to knowledge and things of the spirit because, where everyone is ‘tolerably’ ignorant, and things are ‘harmlessly’ uncertain, what passes for tolerance — but is in fact indifference — spreads around a sense of comfort.
First, thank you to everybody who’s donated to YNP! and 3CR during this year’s radiothon: you rock! Please note that you can still donate and help 3CR each its fundraising goal of $275,000.
Secondly, last week’s episode (June 19) was a repeat of our August 2023 interview with Bradley Onishi; the week prior (June 12) was our radiothon episode; on June 5 we played a repeat of our April 2024 interview with Alex Hanna and before that, on May 29, we broadcast the interviewJeff Sparrow conducted with Richard Seymour about Richard’s new book, Disaster Nationalism.
• This episode will be available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify and other platforms after broadcast.
• We also have a Facebook page for the show, which you’re invited to ‘Like’ and to ‘Follow’, although because the anti-social platform is bloody awful, chances are you’ll never notice it.
This June 3CR really needs your support. Your donation ensures that the station remains free of government and corporate influence, and a true voice for the community.
The 2025 Radiothon theme is ‘Your Station, Your Voice’ and 3CR needs to raise $275,000. 3CR has been with us since 1976, keeping us company with exceptional programs and music 24 hours a day. If you’ve ever enjoyed just a single program, then that’s a great reason to support us with a tax-deductible donation and make sure 3CR is here for you tomorrow.
Two Greek anarchists are making molotov cocktails. One says to the other: "So who will we throw these at then?" The other replies: "What are you, some kind of fucking intellectual?"
