When looking into extremist groups one
initially relates the concept to predominantly American based groups like the
Anti-Semitic neo-Nazi skinheads, the anti government extremists or the
environmental and animal rights extremists. Ideas of terrorism and
suicide bombers also spring to mind but what about the ‘local surfers’ who were
involved in the 2005 Cronulla beach riots?
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| Image source |
The day the
riots started local surfers who were largely of anglo-celtic decent displayed a
recent rise in patriotism. This included wearing the Australian flag by
wrapping it over their bodies, hanging it from balconies and cars and
displaying temporary tattoos of the Southern Cross and the union jack. These
acts of nationalism only worsened as they paired such actions with hate
messages and abuse towards the Lebanese community, essentially claiming that
they wanted their beach but by using various profanities and derogatory racial
phases.
These surfers had resorted to violence and a
racial stance that caused a great deal of embarrassment for many Australians. The fact is that we are a multicultural
nation and essentially are all immigrants, aside from the aboriginal community seemed
to have been displaced in the minds of these young surfers.
According to Gardener’s (1997) definition of
extremism:
It is described
as a dogmatic intolerance, expressed mildly or violently, and inclines toward
an inflexible obedience to an accepted authority, shaped by a common ideology
or sense of group unity.
Based on this definition the surfers can
definitely be seen as carrying out extremist’s acts as they were united by a
common intolerance towards the Lebanese community and they engaged in violence
towards their goal of trying to eradicate these people from their beaches.
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| Image of people in support of Austrlalia First party policies. Image source |
It appears that on further investigation into
Australia and its racial prejudice we have a registered federal political party
that freely admit to wanting to ‘abolish multiculturalism’ known as the Australia
First Party. The party was actually linked to the Cronulla riots and was found
to be sending mobilization messages to members of the community. The party
states that ‘the present government's policy on multi-culturalism is
turning Australia into a nation of tribes and, if not stopped, will continue to
erode social cohesion and fuel social tension.’
I do not agree with this
statement I think the diverse range of cultures in Australia is something that
makes our nation great. Visit inner city Melbourne and smell the aromas from
the Yum Cha in China Town, to the vast amount of Italian homemade pasta and
pizza restaurants and to the Spanish Tapas bars to name just a few. All of
these cultures can come together and their cuisines be shared by one and all. The
party’s policy on immigration also seems fairly warped ‘Our policy on
immigration is "zero net" which means the number of immigrants
we will allow in each year will equal the number of people permanently leaving
Australia per year.’ With such a vast land that is undeveloped why can’t we
help to provide for people who are born into less fortunate families and to
remove them from areas under constant danger?
Whether this party can be labeled as an
extremist group is difficult to decide? They do seem to have some fairly
radical ideas and they do appear to want to get rid of multicultural
communities, which could show ties to such example of neo-Nazis but they are
not going as far as planning any terrorist attacks or creating such violence. They
were involved in the Cronulla Riots to some degree but exactly how much
influence the party has we will never really know, sending messages to gain
attention isn’t the same as party members performing specific acts of violence.
They do use the Internet to spread messages and try and recruit people to vote
for them but not in the same way that extremist groups like Stormfront for
example do to spread white extremist pride messages to incite such hate.
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