After a campaign built on vengeance, mass deportation plans, and promises to ‘clean house’, Trump’s second term has moved past dog-whistling and straight into foghorn territory.
Within a short time of returning to office, his administration began enacting sweeping anti-immigration policies, laying groundwork for ‘tent cities’ to detain migrants, and proposing legislation that critics (read: anyone not in a red cap) describe as laying the foundations for a police state. Journalists, academics, and protestors, all back in the firing line. This time, however, with fewer checks and balances, and a legal system already stacked with Trump-era judges.
And what happens in America, rarely stays in America.
Australia has long imported more than just Netflix shows and vaping trends. Far-right talking points and conspiracy theories have made a home here, sanded down by parliamentary respectability, but still pointing toward the same core goals: white nationalism, heteropatriarchy, and control.
Following the failed Voice to Parliament referendum in 2023, the far right gained new ground under the guise of ‘Australian values.’ The referendum’s defeat was spun by conservative media as a victory for unity, when in reality, it gave cover to a swelling undercurrent of racial resentment and historical denial.
Neo-Nazi groups seized the moment. The year that followed saw an uptick in far-right movements and disinformation campaigns, and political figures flirting with fascist-adjacent rhetoric while maintaining plausible deniability. ASIO confirmed that ideologically motivated violent extremism, especially far-right, now constitutes one of the country’s primary national security threats. But the public response has remained lukewarm, in part because the movement isn’t always marching in jackboots. Sometimes it’s wearing a suit. Sometimes it’s just asking “questions.” Sometimes it’s your local MP.
Peter Dutton (spud got cooked) and the post-Morrison Liberal Party haven’t missed the memo. Since 2023, the party has leaned heavily into culture war territory. Pushing back on gender diversity in schools, and casually undermining Indigenous rights while claiming to honour ‘traditional values.’ What was once the domain of fringe Sky News after dark is now regular Liberal Party policy fodder.
It’s not subtle, because other parties, worried about being labelled radical, mostly avoid confrontation. This leaves us in a national political landscape where conservative commentators can accuse university students of reverse racism on national television while pretending Australia’s race relations are just misunderstood banter.
As always, the Liberals position themselves as the last defence against a progressive apocalypse. In reality, they’re accelerating the spread of imported American-style culture wars, dressed up in high-vis. But it’s not about policy rather about fear, because that is how the far right operates now. Not just with bile, but through coordinated online campaigns and the slow erosion of truth under the weight of manufactured doubt.
It’s no coincidence that both Trump and Australia’s most vocal nationalists return, again and again, to the border. Fortress Australia, the policy fantasy where all problems can be solved by keeping ‘others’ (read: anyone not white) out, continues to dominate public discourse, even as climate crisis, economic inequality, and settler colonial violence remain unaddressed.
Trump's second term has taken cues from Australia's border regime with indefinite detention, offshore processing, the framing of asylum seekers as criminals rather than humans fleeing danger. Australia, for its part, continues to “lead” with militarised border policy, and this cross-pollination of cruelty is strategic. Nations watch each other, learn from each other, and legislate accordingly. The result is a world where authoritarianism doesn't arrive with tanks, but with 6pm news soundbites. Still, students are pushing back.
Across the country, antifascist collectives, grassroots organisers, and internationalist youth movements are fighting the tide. Online, students are documenting far-right activity and quickly creating counter-narratives.
It’s happening, because the alternative, silence, is complicity. And if history has taught us anything, it’s that fascism thrives when people look away.
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