In nationalist circles there is always discussion about why we need to gain power, but little critical reflection on how it will be obtained. With the recent drastic increase in support for nationalist policies among the voting public, now is a good time to take a clear-eyed look at nationalist political strategy. Is there a realistic plan for how nationalists can actually get their policies implemented in Australia? Do our assumptions rest on realistic premises, and can we form an accurate picture of how power works?
The accepted political strategy of nationalists so far has been to obtain state power by persuading the Australian public of the virtues of ethno-nationalism through political activism, and then to convert this sentiment into votes in order to peacefully take control of the state and enact nationalist policies. Unfortunately, the experiences of nationalists in Australia, and of the various populist movements abroad, over the past ten years have proven that the assumptions underpinning this plan are largely false.
Firstly, the actions of the so-called populist movements and leaders once they have obtained power have proven that there is no connection whatsoever between public opinion and elite policymaking, even in circumstances where there is a electoral mandate to do so. In the US, UK and Italy, populist leaders running on explicitly ethno-nationalist platforms have utterly failed to act on the concerns of the voters who put them in office. In every case they have defaulted to the preferences of the bureaucratic and crony capitalist elites who have actual power, as opposed to the demands of the effectively powerless mass of voters.
The list of such betrayals is almost endless. The most egregious example is that of Donald Trump, who campaigned on a platform of closed borders and military non-intervention, only to enact a plan to literally sell US citizenship to the highest bidder and start the largest Middle East war since 2003 at the behest of Israel. One can also contrast Boris Johnson’s promises that Brexit would result in lower immigration, and the result a decade later that Britain is facing a veritable invasion of military-age male “asylum seekers” who are imposed on almost every community in the country while being housed in hotels at the taxpayers’ expense, and then defended with state force. Voters have not only been ignored, but they got the opposite of what they wanted (an intensification of the status quo) every time.
There is no reason to assume that a future One Nation government in Australia would be any better, even if they were partnered in coalition with a genuine nationalist party holding a metaphorical gun to their head. That’s not just because One Nation are keen to sell out their principles in exchange for political power (though they certainly are). It is primarily because of structural factors.
This leads on to the second reason why the calculus of metapolitics and electioneering has proven to be false. For the state is not an impartial instrument that can be wielded by whoever wins the most seats in the House of Representatives. The managerial class in Australia has become so bloated that it now constitutes a distinct power centre in itself, with interests diametrically opposed to those of Australian ethno-nationalists. To get some idea of the power of the bureaucratic class, last financial year taxation from all levels of government totalled 30.2% of GDP. The non-market sector of the economy (which includes both direct government employees and predominantly government funded industries like healthcare and education) now accounts for 31.5% of jobs.
It is in the interests of government employees, and those who derive their income from government expenditure, to maintain both multiculturalism and the demographic replacement of White Australians.
A few examples will suffice. If we simply expelled Islamist terrorists and other foreigners who commit violent crime from the country regardless of what piece of government paper they hold, then we wouldn’t need to pay the masses of feds and police required to watch them. We wouldn’t have to pay for prisons to incarcerate them, nor guards to watch them. We wouldn’t have to subsidise their criminal lifestyles with Centrelink payments, nor would we need to pay money to support potential victims. There would be no government-funded NGOs to create sob stories about racism on their behalf. They would simply be gone, and with them the need for the vast number of bureaucrats that “solve” the problems that they cause.
The same goes for multiculturalism. If nationalists took power and abolished all state and federal government organisations devoted to promoting and enforcing multiculturalism, and ended all hate speech laws, then vast numbers of bureaucrats and NGO employees would be rendered unemployed (and essentially unemployable). The bottomless amounts of taxpayer-funded “community grants” given to bribe ethnic voting blocs into supporting uniparty politicians would no longer change hands. The teams of AFP agents tasked with poring through your social media posts in search of “hate speech” would have to get real jobs.
In short, if nationalists actually solved the problems that the current system creates, then the gravy train would come to a screeching halt. One of the major power centres of the Australian elite would take a massive hit in both funding and influence. Unfortunately, it seems fanciful that the bureaucracy would impartially carry out an order to liquidate itself. Far from being a weapon to be wielded by a nationalist government, the bureaucracy would engage in the sort of endless obstructionism of the kind that Trump faced in his first term, and possibly even organise a mass political mobilisation (with the assistance of its allies in the media and uniparty) that would sweep the nationalist government out of office before it could effectively consolidate power. Nationalist policies would be an existential threat to much of the bureaucracy. That’s why they’re mobilising against nationalists now, rather than waiting to find out.
We cannot lay all the blame at the feet of bureaucrats, however. In a liberal democracy, money is a prerequisite for entering parliament, and the people who spend most freely in politics are those who have their interests most directly impacted by it – Australia’s crony capitalists.
In true free market conditions there would be no virtual duopoly on supermarkets and airlines, and no dominance by the big four in banking. Likewise, if the government stopped printing infinite amounts of fiat currency and let interest rates be dictated by the market rather than the RBA, there would be no bloated financial sector and deranged property speculation. If there were no infinite flood of cheap Indian labour, then businesses might have to actually invest money into improving their capital to increase productivity, rather than pocketing the profits they get from hiring Rajesh over Robert.
Thus the hand of whoever would dare to slow the flood of immigration would not only face the wrath of the awakened bureaucrat, but also those who have become rich by conspiring with them.
As we have seen recently, the managerial class and the crony capitalists will do anything to prevent their stranglehold on power from being loosened. Firstly, they have erected undemocratic legal barriers to creating nationalist political organisations via the Prohibited Hate Groups and criminal hate speech laws. As I have argued previously, these not only restrict the political rights of those directly impacted by the laws, but are also intended to suppress discussion of topics such as immigration and multiculturalism which are of concern to nationalists. Secondly, they have imported a non-stop flood of naturalised foreign voters who will support the managerialists and crony capitalists out of self-interest. If you’ve never paid taxes in Australia before, then welfare, fake government jobs and “community grants” are effectively free money. Why would you ever be tempted to bite the hand that feeds you, when you can vote uniparty and get more free stuff?
What, then, should be done? The result of this must not be despair or falling into the trap of impotently fedposting that “there is no political solution”. Instead, it must result in the realisation that dismantling the managerial state and restricting its power is a prerequisite for achieving the goal of ensuring a White Australian supermajority in this country in perpetuity. Acting on the assumption that state power can solve all of our problems if only the right people were in charge would be to repeat the same mistake that every populist revolt has made the world over. The state is the problem. It is not an impartial tool, but a rat’s nest of vested interests. As long as the bureaucratic bloc and its crony capitalist dependents continue to hold power in this country, any attempt to gain real political power will be futile. It’s like going to the casino and expecting the house to play fair.
The whitepill in all this is that dismantling the managerial state and restricting state power is a goal shared by others on the right – libertarians, classical liberals and even small-government conservatives. Coalitions of disparate ideologies rarely last long, but creating a common front to achieve certain political objectives is eminently achievable. Such a coalition would be too big to ban, and too enmeshed with the system to effectively target without causing collateral damage to the establishment right. March for Australia has been a real world demonstration of this, with regards to both mass immigration and free speech.
There are many policies that could be pushed for in the short term to weaken the bureaucratic power centre. Advocating for a referendum on a bill of rights with constitutionally protected free speech and free assembly would be a good first step in staying their hand. As would be advocating for the mass reduction of student visas, which would not only reduce immigration, but also permanently cripple the bastion of managerialist power that is the university sector. Getting the ABC defunded would both take down a key anti-national propaganda outlet, and seriously demoralise the managerial class. No one measure will definitively break the stranglehold of the bureaucracy, but each blow makes a nationalist victory that much more possible.
When political circumstances change, theory must change with it. If Australian nationalists are to have any hope of political success, they need to ditch whatever naïve beliefs they might have retained about the state and the managerial class, and forge alliances with the broader right to fight back against the Australian leviathan.
Header image: The Destruction of Leviathan by Gustave Dore (Public Domain).
