Right wing extremism poses an immediate threat to the Australian people and their liberal democratic order. Enthralled by myth and ideology, captivated by an idealized and nostalgic past, and enticed by the promises of identity and belonging, right wing extremist organizations are resurging. Their emergence and enduring presence demonstrate remarkable continuity in the Australian democratic context. As a result, this book offers the first comprehensive examination of the Australian extreme right, providing insight into over 350 organizations in under two centuries.

To illuminate this continuity, this book considers extreme right continuity through a lens of ideology, myth, identity, and mobilization. It explores notions of duty, consequence and virtue within extremist ideologies to demonstrate how organizations come to endorse violence as morally permissible and necessary. This book thus spans histories of white nationalism and supremacy, fascism and neo-Nazism, racialized Odinism, Christian extremism, antigovernment extremism, sovereign citizens, and complex ideologies.

By considering the violent threat of these organizations in association with their non-violent strategies that seek to weaken and subvert the Australian liberal democratic order, this book promises to support academics, policymakers and practitioners alike.

Kristy Campion is Associate Professor of Terrorism and Security at the Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security, Charles Sturt University. She is one of Australia’s leading scholars in terrorism studies, with an extensive publication record in leading international security journals on terrorism and political violence. She has substantial national and international impact due to her work on terrorism and extremism in Western democratic contexts. She focuses on transhistorical and transnational threat natures, ideological systems underpinning political violence, right- and left-wing threats, and strategic/tactical evolution. She published the first comprehensive history of terrorism in Australia, Chasing Shadows. Associate Professor Campion routinely advises governments and entities in relation to counter terrorism and countering violent extremism. As a result, she is a highly sought-after speaker in academic and practitioner settings, as well as in the national and international media.