Japan: the South-West foreign policy, 2026

Written by: (Contributed) on 21 April 2026

 

The three island chains of US military control

A Pentagon military plan to strengthen the top end of the First Island Chain has included increased reliance upon Japan. The present Takaichi government appears only too willing to oblige; couched in misleading diplomatic terminology; however, the new South-West foreign policy has a wider arc of influence than merely islands south-west of key strategic military facilities, which serve 'US interests'. The foreign policy position has, moreover, raised questions for Australia, as Japan's military partner in the Indo-Pacific region.

A major diplomatic statement from Japan, issued in early April, drew attention to it developing a South West foreign policy toward strategic islands, as it increasingly has become a front-line for the US-led Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) toward China. (1) In recent years the Pentagon has reverted to previous Cold War regional defence and security provision with Island Chain Theory; it has subsequently been revamped to serve 'US interests' with the onset of the present Cold War, and expanded into the Indian Ocean with fourth and fifth chains centred on Diego Garcia. (2) The Indian Ocean intelligence facility is
directly linked to similar Australian-based facilities at Pine Gap, Central Australia.  

The US-Japan alliance has also been upgraded in the present Cold War to a 'global alliance'. (3) It marked the culmination of US diplomatic moves to shift Japan away from a pacifist constitution imposed immediately after the Second World War, toward a fully-fledged military power to serve 'US interests'. The moves have been accompanied by Japan's defence budget doubling during the past decade, to $77.8 billion by 2024. (4)

The position of the Takaichi government has been one of total compliance; a recent diplomatic statement issued from Tokyo announced their intentions to push for policies of 'a normal country capable of war'. (5) The issue of the 're-interpretation' of Japan's pacifist constitution, however, has proved highly contentious, amongst other countries and inside Japan itself. While the moves have been supported by other US allies, they have raised serious concerns in some Asian countries previously occupied by Imperial Japan, and also some Japanese people who fear the problems associated with militarism.

Source: Global Times

And Taiwan, and its precarious defence and security provision, has conspicuously formed part of the US-led agenda for Japan; assessments have noted that 'Taiwan is moving towards the centre of world affairs', and a regional flash-point. (6) Tokyo-Taipei diplomacy is close.

It is not difficult to calculate the extent to which the Pentagon have pushed Cold War agendas during the recent period. During the period between 1991 and 2016, Taiwan initiated about 42,000 investment projects in China; in fact, it was central to China's rise to prominence. (7) Since 2016, however, most Taiwanese businesses have relocated their China operations to other ASEAN countries, in compliance with US-led directives. (8)

The East China Sea and Miyko Strait have now also been assessed as sensitive for the wider First Island Chain, which include small islands and other outcrops which have become highly strategic. Runways are under construction on Mage Island, for example, whereas missile defence batteries and surface to air missile units have been placed elsewhere. (9)   

Japan has also stationed military personnel on some islands; defence officials have verified that 'more than 10,000 Japanese military personnel are in the south-west, but several hundred each on at least four other islands'. (10) It is as if the Takaichi government has followed similar examples of policies pursued by pre-war and wartime Imperial Japan, common during the fascist period while pursuing their own far-right political agendas.

The Takaichi government has also been keen to push for the military upgrading of Japan's defence and security provision; it has followed initiatives over a decade ago for Japan to nationalise about 280 remote islands as part of military planning, despite sovereignty of some of the landmasses being contested. (11) The 'new' foreign policy has a long history.

What the recent diplomatic statement did not divulge, furthermore, was the arc from US military facilities to the islands south-west of Japan also swings northerly to the Kuril Islands and Sea of Okhotsk, which mark the beginning of the First Island Chain. (12) It has become highly sensitive in recent years with the thawing of Arctic waters, exposing sea passages north of Russia from the Chuckchi Sea and away from southerly routes. (13) The recent high-level diplomatic discourse and disagreements about Greenland are best assessed in the context. The vast landmass forms part of the access and egress into Arctic waters.

While the US has continued to fortify their First Island Chain, with military upgrading of military facilities in Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines, to restrict China's access and egress into the wider Indo-Pacific region, the northerly route, for the Pentagon, has become extremely problematic. It is largely beyond normal bounds for any direct US military involvement apart from regular spy flights from satellite systems.

These developments, with the militarisation of Japan and rapid deployment facilities, have far-reaching implications for Australia which is bound by various diplomatic agreements with Tokyo. The US-led IPS, for example, rests upon the so-called 'Quad', which has been planned to contain and encircle in China, together with other diplomatic considerations between Tokyo and Canberra. Compliance, by all concerned, remains the order of the day.

It is not idle speculation, therefore, to note that Australia could be drawn into 'real-war scenarios' by the Takaichi government eagerly following directives from the White House concerning Taiwan, or elsewhere in any one of several serious regional flashpoints:
                                        
  We need an independent foreign policy!

1.     Japan races to fortify island chain, Australian, 1 April 2026.
2.     Websites: Island Chain Theory.
3.     The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
4.     Australian, op.cit., 1 April 2026.
5.     Bracing for the fallout as Japan's Iron Lady shows some mettle, Australian, 6 February 2026.
6.     Australian, op.cit., 1 April 2026.
7.     Ibid.
8.     Ibid.
9.     Ibid.
10.   Ibid.
11.   Japan to nationalise 280 islands, The Age, 10 January 2014; and, Japan puts disputed islands on school curriculum, The Age, 13 January 2014.
12.   See: Map of the World, Peters Projection, Actual Size.
13.   Ibid.

 

War, austerity, and the cold chill of capitalist crisis

 antiWritten by: (Contributed) on 21 April 2026

 

Two separate statements issued in the past couple of weeks underline the depth of the crisis that bourgeois governments face. The first came from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its increased demand for austerity as the world heads toward global recession. The second came from the Australian government and its announcement of increasing military spending.

The Australian government announcement was accompanied by muted calls by Treasurer, Jim Chalmers that, in the face of a looming recession, there might be some ‘assistance’ in the coming budget. He was also seeking to appease the IMF assuring his financial masters that restraint will be the order of the day and cuts will be made where necessary.

The IMF calls for austerity. All capitalist governments have shown a preparedness to cut social spending but all are rapidly pumping more into their respective armed forces. It is entirely illogical, but then any claim to logic that capitalist governments have is, at best, a mystery.

The latest IMF report shows just how close the global economy is to recession. IMF Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva, indicated that global economic growth will further shrink to a point perilously close to two per cent. Austerity was demanded. This has serious ramifications for the working class, already saddled with rising prices, lowering real wages and now the added pressure from the US war on Iran and the inevitable oil crisis.

The Georgieva call for spending cuts was made in the lead up to the Australian Federal Budget. She made it clear that the Australia should avoid ‘untargeted’ cost-of-living relief spending. Inflation is likely to rise in the coming months and recession is no longer a potential threat but is being spoken of as an almost inevitable consequence of the war against Iran.

Economic growth in Australia is now predicted to slow to just 2 per cent this year and fall to 1.7 per cent in 2027. Treasurer Chalmers continues to downplay these figures. Chalmers has pledged to juggle both the demands of the IMF and the necessity of not cutting too viciously in the budget. A dangerous hire-wire act. The government has indicated it is navigating a ‘narrow path’ to avoid recession while managing a ‘weakened’ economy. We shall all have to wait and see, but there is little room for optimism.

Chalmers, like all Treasurers, does his best to deflect from the crisis that capital lives with. While the war in Iran certainly exacerbates the immediate problems facing global capitalism, the real problems lie in the fragility of the capitalist system itself and the crisis that haunts capital; the tendency for a fall in the global rate of profit.

This crisis drove the capitalist world to globalise. It didn’t resolve the problem. The backlash to economic nationalism and trade war politics has not solved the problem. Things get worse and imperialist war looms as a last throw of the dice to save a sclerotic economic system.

Chalmers said Treasury was still working through the consequences of the conflict for the Australian economy, ‘which are already serious and could become severe.’ Indeed, it could!

Economists knit their brows and wring their hands. The Australian government announced that spending for the military was to skyrocket. There is a madness to all this, but economic downturn, capitalist crisis and the striving for military ascendancy are hardly rational endeavours.

By 2033, fully three per cent of the Australian GDP will go to the military. The ALP government never tires of making proclamations to the effect that a rise in military spending somehow boosts the economy. There is a twisted logic that tries to equate a militarisation of society with economic and industrial policy. This is seen in the boast that the AUKUS outlay of hundreds of billions of dollars will lead to thousands of jobs. This is a ludicrously expensive job creation scheme and especially so when people cannot get decent housing or healthcare. The spending on those quite possibly mythical submarines would effectively resolve all social issues that face Australia and its working class. But no; the new boost in spending can only make things worse.

The ‘new guns before butter’ economic plans will see military spending reach $887 billion dollars by 2035-36. The industrial ‘benefit’ will come from shipbuilding, the manufacture of drones and the technology required to make Australia a worthwhile target in the event of war.

Our economic ‘masters’ have decreed that the private superannuation sector will be tapped in order to find the cash for the new $53 billion military spending just announced. Those same super funds are at least officially used to fund major ‘nation-building’ projects and large-scale expenditures.

The lurch into arms spending and arms manufacture is not a uniquely Australian phenomenon but is a central component of capitalist economies as the very system crumbles before their eyes.

Most recent figures indicate that 50 per cent of all countries are increasing their military spending. Forty per cent of nations are now spending 2 per cent or more of GDP on their respective military budgets.

The extra spending on the military capacities of all countries is a drain on all economies but is good for the business of the war profiteers and the arms traders and manufacturers. The top 100 arms manufacturers have doubled sales in the past two decades. Profits are up. Business is booming. While this has gone on unchecked, the already strained economies of capitalist nation-states become more fragile. Social spending has been slashed, debt has risen and global inflation has been steadily climbing.

Against this backdrop, the IMF, as the banker for global capitalism, stands more than a little exposed. It routinely calls for austerity when governments frame budgets and offers mealy-mouthed calls for restraint when speaking of military expenditure. The best it seems to be able to offer is a declaration that governments need to ‘carefully coordinate’ military spending with monetary policy.

This allows for the Australian government to allow the militarisation of the economy as a direct benefit for the national economy. This is a ‘careful’ coordination indeed. The premise is to spend big, offer lucrative contracts to private capitalist enterprises, sell the materiel overseas in order to make profits while prolonging the suffering of the world’s working class. Central to the thinking of bourgeois governments is the requirement to serve imperialist demands and find a suitable scapegoat to blame for failure of the economy at any given moment.

Capitalism shudders and staggers toward the abyss. As it staggers, it threatens the lives of all on the planet. 

Comrade Hugo Throssell

 Written by: Allan M. on 19 April 2026

 

This year we remember Comrade Hugo Throssell, who fought at Gallipoli in 1915 and fought the rest of his life for freedom of the working class and an end to wars.

Hugo Throssell VC fought and risked his life countless times in the bloody Gallipoli campaign of 1915. A WA farmer, Throssell, like many Australian men, signed up to fight for Australia at the outset of World War One. Fighting with WA’s 10th Light Horse Regiment, he immediately found himself in the midst of the inter-imperialist brutality. 

Landing in Gallipoli for Winston Churchill’s blood-soaked gamble for a scrap of land, he took part in the tragic charge of the Nek. While Throssell survived, nearly a third of the regiment were killed by machine gun fire in what he called the ‘fool charge’, a shocking loss of life in a battle that the soldiers desperately tried to call off. Later, he fought in the battle for Hill 60, and while being seriously wounded, he managed to rally his men to take and hold a trench-line near the summit. Fighting and bleeding on this hill far from home, he was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions. Throssell would eventually recover from the wounds and illness caused by this battle and continue serving until 1919. He went to war with his brother but he came home alone, carrying significant physical and mental injuries.

Throssell’s battles after the war get nearly no attention in Australian popular history, but his fights for his mates when he came home deserve just as much praise. Throssell said the war, seeing his mates chewed up by gunfire on a spit of dirt on the other side of the world, seeing Australians killed and maimed on the whims of British generals, made him a socialist. His wife, Katharine Susannah Prichard, was a founding member of the Communist Party of Australia, and together they fought for an end to imperialist conflict and the creation of a peaceful and prosperous society. In WA, Throssell was commonly found supporting unemployed and striking workers, and speaking at socialist events alongside his wife. Famously, the VC winner said in Northam, WA that the only way to end wars was to end the capitalist system which drives imperialist conflict.

Tragically, after surviving the horrors of the First World War, Throssell fell victim to capitalism at home. Being outspoken in the cause for socialism and peace, he found himself isolated and excluded from many areas of employment by WA capitalists. During the Great Depression, this led to extreme hardship for him and his family. To end this hardship, Throssell thought his best chance would be to provide his wife with a war widow’s pension so that she could continue to provide for their child. One week after Armistice Day in 1933, Throssell ended his own life.

On Anzac Day, we remember Comrade Throssell’s statement: that the only way to celebrate peace is to do things which make for peace.

We reject the shameless war-mongering of politicians who invoke the name of dead Australians to promote more war. In our times, with genocidal imperialist violence being supported by the Australian government, we continue Comrade Throssell’s fight for peace and socialism.

Peace can only come with the defeat of capitalism. No war but class war.

BAE Systems in South Australia targeted by Anti-War Protestors

Written by: Kate O’Brien on 12 April 2026

 

(5.30am and the protest begins. Photo: Disrupt_Arms_Traders Instagram)

In the early hours of Wednesday 8th April, anti-war activists blocked the entrance to the BAE Systems building at Edinburgh, north of Adelaide/Tarntanya, to protest the company’s manufacture and supply of titanium parts for the F-35 bomber jets used by the Israeli and US militaries. The Edinburgh precinct is one of five locations owned by the global company in Adelaide.

The protestors chained the entrance gates shut, and one activist chained himself to the gates, remaining locked on for three hours to send a clear message that providing parts to the US-Israeli war machine makes Australia complicit in genocide and needless military aggression in the Middle East.

The anti-war group Weapons Out organised the blockade protest with the aim to disrupt global arms trade and highlight the fact that merchants of death like BAE make Australia complicit in war crimes.

Davin Burns, a peace activist who chained himself to the gates, stated: “Australia must cease involvement in US-led wars of aggression. BAE Systems is making parts for Israeli and US F-35 jets that are carrying out genocide in occupied Palestine, and an illegal war against Iran.”

A Weapons Out media spokesperson added: "F35 fighter jets are being used to kill and maim people and damage the facilities they need: hospitals, schools and food supplies. Hosting BAE makes us complicit in the carnage. The first casualty of war is said to be truth, but the rest are mostly civilians."

SA Police attended the anti-BAE action and attempted to thwart the entrance gate blockade and threaten Davin Burns with arrest if he did not unchain himself from the gate. Burns refused. A total of 16 police and 9 police vehicles (2 cage vans) turned up at the protest site.

Another attempt by an inspector ('District Officer') to get the protestors to unlock the chained gate was once again rebuffed. This inspector informed the protestors she would consult with BAE to see what they wanted to do.

Two hours into the protest, a counter-terrorism car drove past with the occupants taking photos and videos of the protest. This vehicle drove up and down the BAE entrance on the street and lingered for the duration of the protest.

The action took place from 5.30 am until 8.30 am, when the activists chose to wrap up the protest and Burns unlocked his gate chain. No arrests were made by the police. Weapons Out considered this three-hour-long demonstration a success for the inconvenience and embarrassment it caused BAE Systems.

The Malinauskas Labor government is a big promoter of foreign war profiteers in South Australia such as BAE, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing et al. This war premier has built up a considerable war state/military industrial complex in the state. He’ll go to any lengths to please his war profiteer masters.

The State Development Coordination and Facilitation Act is a recent notorious example. This state act enables the state government to waive and override any of the 31 parliamentary acts that might impede the progress of the AUKUS nuclear submarine project undertaken at the Osborne Naval Shipyard.

Once again, quislings in government override Australian sovereignty to serve the geopolitical interests of the US Empire.

The anti-war activists acknowledged that this action against BAE took place on unceded Kaurna land and recognized their ongoing struggle against the destructive forces of colonialism and capitalism. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.

 

Award wage increases are not "trivial"

 Written by: Ned K. on 10 April 2026

 

(Low wages are bad enough without being swindled into the bargain, Source: UWU Facebook page)

In May this year the Fair Work Commission will hand down its National Wage Case Decision which will determine the minimum wage rates that will apply in Awards from July 2026. The ACTU on behalf of affiliated Unions has put in claim for 5% increase in the Awards rates of pay for all classifications. Various employer organizations have argued that the Commission should determine that there be no wage increases at all or at least no wage increase in any Award greater than 3.5%.

The 5% wage increase claim by the ACTU is nowhere enough to provide a real wage increase for the still many thousands of workers paid under Awards given the current rising cost of living crisis for the working class.

Real wage increases to the Award minimum wage rates also benefit workers who are paid above- Award wage rates under Enterprise Agreements as a real wage increase in the Award enables workers under Agreements to pressure their employers to at least maintain relativity to their industry Award wage rates.
In the early 1990s the federal ALP government changed industrial laws to diminish the power of Unions to improve wages and working conditions across a whole industry. The new industrial laws made site and/or employer specific enterprise bargaining as the way for workers to improve wages and working conditions.

This inevitably divided workers across industries and within the same industry and even within the same employer where an employer had more than one worksite.

For the working class as a whole, the move away from Awards as the main method for increasing wages and improving working conditions arguably increased the surplus value extracted from the labor of the working class as a whole.

When the Liberal/National Party government managed the capitalist economy on behalf of big business between 1996 and 2007, it tried to return the Australian working class to pre-Award days by legislating individual contracts called Australian Workplace Agreements as the main method of determining all workers' wages and conditions.

The capitalist class's own economists proudly announced year after year that the percentage of the capitalist Gross Domestic Product attributed to wages and salaries was declining and the percentage attributed to profits was increasing.

The capitalist class has historically opposed regulation of wages and conditions and whenever workers have attempted to improve minimum wages and conditions by regulation.

This has been the case even in the services sectors of the economy which the big corporations and their governments call "non-core" sectors of the economy.

NOT A "TRIVIAL" MATTER

A striking example of this occurred in South Australia in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

In 1929 the Federated Miscellaneous Workers Union made an application to the state Industrial Court for a Common Rule Award to regulate the wages and conditions of caretakers and cleaners.

The application was for such an Award to cover caretakers and cleaners in the inner city and metropolitan area of Adelaide. At that time the owners of office buildings in Adelaide including the Savings Bank of SA and various Insurance companies directly "employed" caretakers and cleaners on individual employment arrangements with no minimum pay and conditions at all. Some of the companies and office building owners remunerated caretakers and cleaners by part money payment and part payment in kind such as provision of lunch and especially with caretakers a room to live in within the building.

The employers argued that the Union's application for an Award for caretakers and cleaners was "trivial" and "not in the public interest" and that these workers were "looked after" well by their benevolent masters!

The Union won the day and for the first time these semi-indentured caretakers and cleaners became "free" wage workers with regulated minimum wages and conditions.

The vast majority of the caretakers and cleaners were males and worked full time hours of 44-48 hours a week Monday to Saturday or Monday to Friday and half a day on Saturday.

The benevolent capitalist owners of the buildings in the inner city and inner metropolitan area did not like having "their" property services workers having basic Award rights and conditions of employment.

They created cleaning companies which were registered as businesses with the relevant government department. They then entered into a commercial cleaning services contract with the newly created contract cleaning companies. The contract cleaning companies were not bound by the Award (then called a Determination of the Court) as were the capitalist owners of the buildings.

The contract cleaning companies were able to pay caretakers and cleaners on less than the new Award and compete with other contract cleaning companies.
The owners of the buildings thought this was pretty good - a return to the "good old days" of a completely de-regulated property services. 

The Miscellaneous Workers Union of course supported its members and applied to the Court to vary the scope of the Award (Determination) so that it covered contract cleaning companies as well. 

In 1933 the contract cleaning companies were bound by the Award (Determination) as well.

Competition between the contract cleaning companies for cleaning services contracts with the city and metropolitan property owners started the still existing "race to the bottom" on price.

Cleaning companies started to win cleaning contracts by cutting hours of work. Full time cleaners became the exception, and cleaners became employed as part -time workers or casual on as little as two-hour shifts.

Workload of cleaners increased dramatically as did turn over of cleaners.

When caretakers and cleaners were directly employed by the building owners prior to the making of the Award (Determination), they undoubtedly increased and maintained the use value of the buildings they cleaned, contributing to the owner's ability to maintain and attract tenants willing to pay the rent and pay increases in rent. In that sense caretakers and cleaners were remunerated amounts less than the value they added to the buildings.

When the caretakers and especially the cleaners became employed by the contract cleaning companies they continued to provide a use value for the building owner. However that is not the prime reason why the contract cleaning companies employed them. The prime reason was so that the cleaning companies made a profit from the surplus value created by the cleaners. This surplus value was created mainly by work intensification, a trend that continues to this day.

That is why any increase in the minimum Award rates of pay is still so important today for cleaners. Caretakers are rarely employed now by property owners of large buildings. The minor maintenance duties and specialized trade work is provided by property maintenance services companies who, like the cleaning companies, are about making profits from the work performed by those they employ.

 

Nazis disband but far-right continues to organise

 Written by: (Contributed) on 10 April 2026

 

(Pauline Hanson and SA One Nation leader Corey Bernardi.  Photo: Charlie Gilchrist/InDaily)

Federal legislation against hate speech, driven by Zionist and anti-Palestinian advocacy groups, had one useful consequence with the laws prompting the National Socialist Network (NSN) to disband.

It might, however, eventually prove a questionable victory over the Australian far-right. By forcing them into an underground position Canberra has potentially made them more of a clandestine organisation using covert operations, and more difficult to identify and counter. The resurgence of two other right-wing front-type political organisations has also provided the far-right with a convenient cover for their neo-Nazi agendas and campaigns.

In mid-January the Australian neo-Nazi National Socialist Network (NSN) officially disbanded on account of pending legislation in Canberra. With military-style precision an official statement from their headquarters noted they would cease to be an open political party from 11.59 on Sunday 18 January 2026; their front organisations, including White Australia, the European Australian Movement and the White Australia Party, likewise, would also cease to exist.

The legislation had followed numerous reports and sightings of groups of black-clad men marching in formation, in both city and rural areas. The fact the neo-Nazis wore face masks to avoid detection made the organisation appear all the more sinister.

The existence of the neo-Nazi movement in Australia is not a recent problem but rests upon nearly a century of small political organisations which adhere to far-right ideologies. (1)

The far-right organisations, however, are rarely straightforward: there has been a long-held tendency for them to conceal themselves behind front organisations, not only to foster respectability but to also have a wider audience. Studies of the far-right Australian League of Rights (ALOR) from decades ago, for example, found that it was 'an extremist, neo-Nazi, anti-semitic, racist organisation … with … racism at the core of the leagues beliefs'. (2)

The ALOR is, furthermore, linked into international networks of like-minded organisations, including a listed affiliate of the shadowy World Anti-Communist League/World League for Freedom and Democracy (WACL/WLFD). (3) The shadowy conspiratorial networks had been established in the earliest days of the previous Cold War by the Taiwanese and South Korean intelligence agents as a public relations arm of pro-US far-right governments. (4)

The Australian connection was never solely confined to traditional far-right political organisations but tended to be broad-based and attached to centre-right organisations. In fact, it was noted in a study of the WACL and ALOR that 'Australia was represented largely by conservative members of Parliament, interspersed with neo-Nazis, racists, and Eastern European immigrants whose roots lay in the fascist collaborationist armies of WW2'. (5)

A CIA intelligence report which saw the light of day described the WACL as 'a neo-fascist umbrella organisation that assisted US intelligence operations'. (6) It is not particularly difficult to identify how the intelligence services use the far-right as agents.

Infiltration of legitimate political parties would appear a speciality of the far-right. Disclosures that neo-Nazis had infiltrated and spied on major Australian political parties as routine measures have tended to be met with blanket silence, a standard tactic when dealing with embarrassing and sensitive issues. (7) One recent investigation, nevertheless, found that the Australian far-right had managed to establish links to sensitive intelligence in Canberra together with gun clubs, while organising secretly on-line. (8)

Other studies have concluded with similar findings: it has been noted, for example, that the ALOR has infiltrated many different organisations, including churches. (9) It has tended to adopt the role of a 'deep organisation', while operating through open, front-type organisations. Studies have found that 'many groups shift identity and bob up again under slightly different names with the same people on the committee'. (10)

Two recent developments in Australia have provided the far-right with openings into wider movements, where they appear to have been made very welcome.

Early this year the far-right were responsible for organising the so-called March for Australia (MFA), which was a cover for attracting a broad-based collection of right-wing political organisations under a common umbrella. Organisers of the MFA openly invited former members of the NSN to participate in their activities and to 'merge into local chapters of the MFA movement'. (11) NSN figures were noted to have 'urged followers to build networks, draft propaganda and be ready and waiting for further directions'. (12)

White supremacist links with South Africa were also acknowledged by the MFA and noted as 'best friends outside the organisation'. (13) The former intelligence services of the Apartheid regime were no strangers to the cultivation of fellow travellers; they were supported to serve their purpose. Their history has been well recorded. (14)

There is also every reason to accept that the recent resurgence of One Nation, particularly in South Australia, will enable the far-right to enter circles of their supporters and other disaffected personnel which associate with that organisation. There is already a strong overlap of personnel, which identify with a common focus of racial profiling and white supremacist political positions.

In conclusion, the significance of both the MFA and One Nation can best be assessed in line with their European counterparts, which have received considerable support from the Trump administration as they are regarded 'as aligned with its agenda'. (15) Those associated with the MFA and One Nation tend to be of European ancestry. 

Progressive forces in Australia should keep their eyes and ears open to the threat of the far-right and the nature of the support coming from the Trump administration, which would appear set on creating and maintaining political fifth column-type operations to serve 'US interests' in countries where serious questions have arisen about the presidential administration in the White House.

1.     See: Nazis out of uniform – the dangers of neo-Nazi terrorism in Australia, Denis Freney, (Sydney, 1985).
2.     How the right gets it wrong, The Age (Melbourne), 21 October 1988.
3.     The League List, Inside the League, Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, (New York, 1986), Appendix, pp. 275-85.
4.     Ibid., page 11 and page 47.
5.     Inside the League, op.cit., page 59.
6.     Quoted: The Beast Re-Awakens, Martin Lee, (London, 1997), page 189; and, Ted Serong, Anne Blair, (Melbourne, 2002), page 186.  
7.     See: Nazis claim their stamp on all parties, The Age (Melbourne), 13 July 1999.
8.     “Private intel', The Sydney Morning Herald, 26 April 2025.
9.     Age, op.cit., 21 October 1988; and, The League of Rights, Nazis out of Uniform, Denis Freney, (Sydney, 1985),  Appendix One.
10.   Age, ibid.
11.   See: Extremists regroup into secret cells, 'waiting for what comes next', Australian, 16 February 2026.
12.   Ibid.
13.   Ibid.
14.   See: Fellow Travellers, Inside BOSS, Gordon Winter, London, 1981), Chapter 39, pp. 526-541.
15.   MAGA allies across Europe face fallout, Australian, 24 March 2026.

Book Review: The Immortalists

 

Written by: Duncan B. on 1 April 2026

 

(Photo supplied)

Aleks Krotoski is a psychologist, academic, broadcaster and journalist who has been reporting on technology for over 25 years. In her book The Immortalists -The Death of Death and the Race For Eternal Life she takes us into a world where what was once science fiction is becoming a reality.

Since ancient times people have dreamed of finding a way to defeat the ravages of old age and keep death at bay, possibly forever. The search for eternal life was once the realm of magicians and alchemists. Modern day magicians and alchemists are striving to develop treatments which will slow down, reverse or even stop the ageing process so that people will be able to live much longer. Many of these treatments have little scientific basis and would be unlikely to get approval by regulatory authorities.

If you think that this is crazy, the even crazier and disturbing part is that the many millions of dollars needed for this research are largely being provided by the same tech billionaires who are behind AI. People such as Musk, Bezos, Altman and Thiel. They are transhumanists, who believe that technology must be used to enhance the body and mind towards immortality.

They believe AI is going to give us everlasting life when we merge ourselves with superintelligent AI to form a singular, post-human artificially intelligent entity. This event is known as the Singularity. What will happen when this occurs, no one can predict, but the transhumanist creators of AI are rushing forward in their race to be the first, irrespective of the consequences for humanity.

They are giving no thought to what society would be like with a larger number of older people, for example the effect on medical and aged care services and
government expenditure on pensions.

Krotoski says, “the developers, the funders, the Silicon Valley machine are preaching a total upheaval of humanity. They say that their tools must be prioritised above all. And because they feel they’ve already disrupted everything else, now they believe they have the power to disrupt death.”

AI is something that affects the whole of humanity. It should not be left in the hands of the deranged megalomaniacs of Silicon Valley.