Overview
The Australian Right has attracted little historiographical attention and has, until now, been a neglected area of study. Individual organisations have been quite well documented and these sources have been used to provide evidence for an argumentative interpretation of right wing political groups and activities in Australia since 1788. The Australian Right emerges from and reflects a diverse tradition. It embraces the 'typical Nazi', brandishing fists and Swastika, or the anti-Asian skinheads of the film 'Romper Stomper', to the modern 'econocrat' who opposes the values of the French Revolution with impressive sounding jargon. It has included priests, polemicists and politicians, broadcasters and bureaucrats, soldiers and solicitors, thugs and technocrats. It has involved people from the margins - crackpots - and other sin the political mainstream, especially Burkean conservaties. Paradoxically it is a heterogeneous movements that has advocated homegeneity. It is synoptic rather than an exhaustive attempt to analyse the philosophies and actions of right wing groups. The book does however, proceed chronologically and covers right wing politics from nineteenth century Anglo-Australian conservatism through the anti-Bolshevism and fascism encountered by world events (1917-1930s) and analyses postwar right wing movements in Australia.