When dozens of uniformed men armed with metal pipes charged up the hill toward a sacred Indigenous site in Melbourne, they were smiling and laughing as they prepared to attack.

“It was like a medieval scene,” says Nathalie Farah, a community ally who was brutally attacked and witnessed the assault on others at Camp Sovereignty. “They ran up the hill, and they were laughing and shouting.”

The attack happened last week when neo-nazis and self-avowed white supremacists splintered from the March for Australia, an anti-immigrant rally that drew tens of thousands of demonstrators in cities across the country. This attack was not an isolated incident of fringe extremism. While some protesters chanted “Australia for the white man,” others insisted to reporters they weren’t racist, claiming they were simply concerned about housing costs and living expenses — issues they blamed on immigration.

Despite denying racist intent, demonstrators marched alongside white power activists, revealing how deeply white supremacist ideology is reintegrating into the mainstream. Right now, far-right political movements across the Global North are weaponizing systemic racism and extreme wealth inequality to scapegoat immigrants and Indigenous peoples.

The attack on Camp Sovereignty

Camp Sovereignty was established in 2006 as a sacred space and burial ground for repatriated remains of Aboriginal people. It is now a place for people to gather, perform cultural ceremonies and advocacy for Indigenous rights.

Videos of the attack show neo-nazi National Socialist Network leader Thomas Sewell leading a group of men up the hill to Camp Sovereignty. In an interview with Ricochet, Farah described a scene of chaos, with men kicking women and Indigenous elders in the stomach and hitting them over the head with poles, causing severe injuries.

“Just to see a group of nazis running up with metal poles — I thought surely that they would push people aside and try to destroy the actual infrastructure. But when I realized that they were there to actually hurt people, everything changed,” Farah said.

This attack, and others like it, are having real implications for Black, Brown and Indigenous peoples who are being targeted and discriminated against by police, politicians and community members alike.

“We’re seeing refugee and migrant communities all over Australia… quite scared of what it’s going to mean for their kids, whether they’re going to be jumped at a train station, or hurt or bullied at school. It’s spreading so much fear in the hearts of Brown people,” Farah said.

Why are so many people protesting immigration?

The March for Australia rallies in multiple cities, including Sydney, Perth, Canberra and Brisbane, resulted in violent clashes between anti-immigration protesters and counter-demonstrators. 

A similar “Canada First” rally is planned for Toronto this weekend, using the campaign messaging of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre that has strong ties to historical white nationalist movements. The rally organizer is calling for mass deportations and a closure of the Canadian border. 

In Donald Trump’s United States, the government has been deploying masked ICE officers (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to detain and deport immigrants en masse, breaking up families, and disappearing people off the streets without due process. 

In the UK, anti-immigrant rallies broke out last month to protest asylum seekers. 

Why are colonial nations that have been built on immigration now fighting to stop the flow of immigrants? 

Though opponents to immigration often point to unemployment rates, low wages, and the unaffordability crisis, research shows these issues are caused by austerity policies, not immigration. The roots of the housing crisis in Canada can be traced back decades to the governments of Mulroney and Chrétien, when business-friendly policies transformed Canada’s housing market from “human necessity” to an investment for the wealthy. It was an era that shifted Canada “towards neoliberalism and near-permanent austerity.”

The issues in Australia are similar — with opponents blaming migrants for housing insecurity, yet evidence shows a lack of supply from the public sector as the cause. A broader study of asylum seekers in Europe shows similar results: immigration actually leads to a positive surge in the economy, reducing unemployment and increasing tax revenue.

A new moral panic

In the absence of evidence of societal harm, conspiracy theories are crucial. An investigation by Australia’s public broadcaster, ABC, uncovered that the March for Australia’s event website used language associated with the “great replacement theory” conspiracy theory. 

In recent years, the false idea of a planned ethnic cleansing of “white people” has found fertile ground in Australia, Canada, the UK, and the U.S. 

Once manifesting primarily in the dark corners of the internet, this conspiracy theory claims that there is a coordinated plan to replace white Europeans with racialized migrants. This insidious myth has inspired mass shootings, white power activism, and white-only settlements.

Though far-right policymakers and white nationalists are playing on the myth of white ethnic cleansing, they themselves are advocating for such a project. Anti-immigration rallies around the world, including the Canada First rally, and the March for Australia, have been rallying around the idea of “remigration.” The term, also used and popularized by Donald Trump, is part of a far-right white nationalist agenda to forcibly remove migrants in a project of ethnic cleansing in the west.

Conspiracy theories, like the global replacement theory, strengthen anti-immigrant sentiment, leading to what some sociologists consider to be a moral panic — a phenomenon that occurs when there is a widespread fear, often fueled by the media, that something evil is threatening society’s wellbeing.

In a statement to Ricochet, Dr. Rai Reece, associate professor at the Toronto Metropolitan University, explained that hysteria and racism are deeply intertwined.

“White supremacy birthed the insidious nature of institutionalized and systemic anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism. What we are seeing in Australia, the U.S., and in Canada is a manifestation of the continued mechanics of structural power and oppression where people have latched on to the optics of ‘too many’ of ‘them,’ and a narrative that creates moral panics regarding the myth of ‘white extinction anxiety.’” Reece said.

Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, said Canada has its own history of neo-nazi and white nationalist movements. 

“Canadian white nationalists seem to have taken inspiration from Australian ones before. There are parallels in the organizing, especially around the calls for mass deportations and the desire and celebration of violence,” he told Ricochet. 

Despite the parallels, he says, Canadian white nationalists do not yet seem prepared for the same level of coordinated violence.

Politicians & billionaires benefit from hate

Anti-immigrant sentiment also grows from the media and messaging spread by the world’s wealthiest people. A 2020 study explains that when elites worry about losing their wealth, whether it be during times of economic hardship or economic boom, they become more prejudiced and exclusionary toward immigrants. It’s beneficial for investors to have public anger focus on immigrants rather than mass wealth inequality between corporate executives and workers.

Rhetoric used in mainstream media also influences the way society feels about immigration, often giving disproportionate coverage to eurocentric voices and perspectives.

“A lot of the narrative that was being pushed around… was actually twisting really serious issues that exist in Australian community today, specifically around housing insecurity and lack of housing, cost of living, the price of food,” Farah explained.

According to Syed Hussan, the executive director of the Migrant Workers’ Alliance For Change, though migrant scapegoating is not a new strategy, it is effective. He pointed to the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, where authorities crushed a movement for better wages and working conditions by turning workers against immigrants, ultimately ending in mass deportations. But Syed warns against viewing this as simply co-opting genuine struggles.

“It’s not that anti-immigrant scapegoating is co-opting real economic struggles, but that they are distracting from the economic struggles of migrants and citizens alike. Unemployment, inflation, etc, are blamed on migrants by a ruling class that knows if workers are divided, they will not hold the corporations and politicians accountable,” Syed told Ricochet. 

The strategy is working across party lines in Canada.

In B.C., premier David Eby recently called to end the temporary foreign worker program in rare agreement with Pierre Poilievre. Prime minister Mark Carney is cracking down on refugees with his Strong Borders Act, or Bill C-2. In Alberta, the government is floating the idea of denying newcomers from specific countries access to social services. These policies are not new, but they are a return to the structural racism on which Canada and other western nations are built.

Racism is not a fringe issue

For Keiran Stewart-Assheton, co-founder of Camp Sovereignty and spokesperson for the Black Peoples Union, said the attack on Camp Sovereignty is a manifestation of Australia’s legacy.

“The attack shows what Australia has always been — a fascist, white supremacist colony built on genocide… we remain armed with truth, culture, and community, and that is far stronger than their hate.” Stewart-Assheton wrote in a statement.

Understanding the relationship between structural racism and extremist white supremacy is crucial to understand how movements like the March for Australia gain mainstream support. Structural racism operates through institutions and systems of power, such as healthcare systems that provide unequal care, and education funding that disadvantages certain communities, according to Reece’s research at Yellowhead Institute. This normalizes power imbalances. 

For organizations like the Migrant Workers’ Alliance For Change, it’s important not to let the most extreme acts of white supremacist violence distract from the larger goal of liberation and human rights for all migrants.

“Our concern remains the actions of Carney and his anti-migrant Bill C-2 and his continuation of permit cancellations while migrants continue to be exploited,” Syed said. The major concern is not solely the right-wing extremists, but rather how little of a difference there is between those extremists and the policies of the ruling political parties.

The path forward

The path forward requires confronting both the immediate threat of white supremacist violence and the deeper systems that make it possible. 

“If there was the will to do it and enough resources, our burgeoning white nationalist groups could be dismantled without the use of violence,” said Balgord. 

According to Balgord, dismantling extremist groups alone won’t solve the crisis or address the root causes. The real work lies in rebuilding the social infrastructure that decades of austerity have destroyed, like public housing, liveable wages, and the social welfare state.

For Syed, the fight for liberation should be a key issue for all social movements.

“Fighting anti-immigrant scapegoating must be central concern for all social movements,” he explains, “because when migrants are blamed, all other struggles — be they for housing affordability, climate justice or gender justice — find themselves less able to win.”