Australia’s leaders on Monday condemned anti-immigration protests over the weekend that saw tens of thousands of people gather in cities across the country, chanting slogans like “send them back” and “stop the invasion.”
The government has described the protests as racist and politicians from both sides of the aisle expressed concerns about the presence of neo-Nazi groups.
Australia is grappling with the growing threat of extremist ideology, amid a rise of far-right nationalism in countries around the world. Australia prides itself on its multiculturalism, but experts say discontent among some groups has been growing because of a lack of affordable housing and soaring living costs.
About 15,000 people gathered for the “March for Australia” anti-immigration rally in Sydney on Sunday, while as many as 3,000 people attended a counterprotest organized by a pro-Palestinian group, the police said. In other parts of Australia, the police said that thousands people attended rallies, but did not distinguish between protesters and counterprotesters.
Populist politicians made speeches at some rallies, while at others, members of neo-Nazi groups spoke and led chants of “heil Australia,” local media reported. Some clashed with counterprotesters. The police said they made a handful of arrests across the country.
Pauline Hanson, the leader of the far-right anti-immigration One Nation Party, spoke at the protest in Canberra, the nation’s capital.
At a demonstration in Adelaide, a protester held up a sign with the face of Dezi Freeman — whom the authorities have identified as the suspect in a shooting that killed two police officers in Victoria State last week — with the caption “free man.” Mr. Freeman is still on the loose. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese acknowledged media reports linking the suspect to the radical anti-government “sovereign citizen” movement, although Mr. Albanese added that those were only allegations.
ASIO, Australia’s domestic intelligence agency, warned earlier this year of the growing threat of “nationalist and racist violent extremism” and “issue-motivated extremism, fueled by personal grievance, conspiracy theories and anti-authority ideologies.”
The Australian government condemned the protests as hateful. “This brand of far-right activism grounded in racism and ethnocentrism has no place in modern Australia,” said Anne Aly, the minister for multicultural affairs.
On Monday, representatives of both the center-left Labor government and the conservative opposition voiced concerns about the presence of far-right extremists at the rallies.
Ms. Aly told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that, while the majority of protesters were not neo-Nazis, the rallies were organized by neo-Nazis and were “clearly racist.”
“When we see neo-Nazis address a crowd of people in some of our major cities, that raises material concerns with respect to social cohesion in our country,” said Paul Scarr, the opposition immigration spokesman.
Kaz Ross, a researcher who studies far-right extremism, said that the protests appeared to have been started by a disparate group of online influencers, but that far-right elements were able to shape the protests according to their ideology. Neo-Nazi groups had capitalized on mainstream concerns about the soaring cost of living and housing scarcity to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment, she said.
The protests marked a significant moment for the far-right in making inroads into the mainstream, Dr. Ross said. “They’ve successfully — it looks to me — met up in public with thousands of Australians. No one threw them out. No one booed them out of the rally. They had a crossover success moment.”
“It is very very concerning,” Dr. Ross said, “and we don’t know where it’s going to go from here.”
Yan Zhuang is a Times reporter in Seoul who covers breaking news.
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