Beware the right-wing race to the MAGA bottom

Dr. Australia’s conservative parties are engaged in a Trump-style contest to see who can exploit division, fear and anti-immigration policies most effectively, writes Victoria Fielding.

AFTER LABOR convincingly won the 2025 Federal Election, it would be nice to believe that toxic, hateful, divisive and anti-democratic MAGAism has been defeated in Australia.

But unfortunately, less than a year later, right-wing parties One Nation, the National Party, and the Liberal Party are in a three-way struggle to defeat MAGA, using the same racist and bigoted anti-immigration and anti-minority strategies as the US President. Embers.

One Nation has been on the racist fringes of Australian politics for three decades. But One Nation’s polls have never been as ahead of the Liberals as they are now. Seeing how well hate sells and striving to repeat the success of toxic “No” campaigns against power Voice of Indigenous People in ParliamentThe Liberal Party has decided that if you can’t beat One Nation, you have to join it.

Here’s why the Liberals are sacking their former leader Susan LeyDecided there wasn’t enough One Nation and became the new leader Angus Taylor He immediately began demonizing immigrants. The Nationals followed suit and appointed their own One Nation-like leaders. Matt Canavan“White supremacist”Great Replacement Theoryextremism in calling for more Australian babies.

The political strategy behind this three-pronged anti-minority attack is “Forward Australia“. When Saturday Newspaper‘s Conal Feehely gone hidden He saw more than extremism at the Advance conference. It saw a well-funded and strategically developed war plan aimed at establishing, normalizing and spreading right-wing extremism in Australia. This included linking ‘Cost of living concern for immigration’.

Many commentators see the three-way race between Australia’s right-wing parties as a break on the right and ultimately an electorally positive development for the Left. The orthodoxy is that right-wing parties are fighting among themselves to snatch the complaint votes of the far-right, mostly in the regions, while keeping their eye on the inner-city seats where elections are won or lost.

This is exactly the selection mathematics suggested by Australia’s leading psephologist. Antony Green For this week’s South Australian Elections, One Nation has been predicted to contest in every seat. He faces the popular Labor Prime Minister Peter Malinauskas and with three leaders in four years, including one with drug convictionThe Liberal Party faces the prospect of being wiped off the political map, including losing its few remaining metropolitan seats.

There are no citizens in South Australia, so the Liberals are battling Independents and One Nation candidates in the regions.

There was a time when I would have been delighted at the prospect of the South Australian Liberal Party being wiped out at the polls, but this is definitely a case of being careful what you wish for. Because no matter what happens on Saturday, our society suffers as One Nation, the Nationals, the Liberal Party and its campaign arm Advance devote all their political energy to fueling division, hatred, racism and resentment.

As the right promotes simplistic narratives that falsely blame every structural problem (housing affordability, cost of living, healthcare) on minorities, Australia risks facing the same polarizing, fragmented, fragmented society that America has experienced under Trump.

We need to be honest about what’s going on in right-wing politics and call out what’s going on. Three right-wing parties are fighting over who will lead the MAGA movement in Australia. Just as the Republican Party embraced MAGAism, moderate right-wing politicians disappeared from the political landscape. Unless you count the Teal Independents as centre-right because they are socially progressive and economically conservative, this means we no longer have a centre-right party in Australia.

Instead what we have is a group of extremist MAGA personalities funded by billionaires. They may appear to be fighting among themselves, but in reality they are collaborating to build an extremist hate movement. The scary part is, because they are using Trump’s playbook, they know exactly how to turn this movement into a viable electoral coalition. Look how well it worked for Trump.

So, as a South Australian and an Australian, I am nervous about this weekend’s elections. Of course Labor will win comfortably. But I don’t think the destruction of the Liberal Party is ultimately good for the country, at a time when it is being driven by growing support for One Nation and Liberals and Nationalists are pursuing One Nation using the same extremist tactics.

Even if this movement does not win any elections, the damage it does to Australia should not be ignored. It is unacceptable that minorities are constantly attacked, made to feel unwanted and unsafe, and subjected to discrimination and racism.

Anti-immigration political strategies should not be normalized as a legitimate form of political discourse. Every Australian who wants this country to be inclusive, safe, tolerant and harmonious must fight against the right-wing MAGAisation of Australia. They are trying to divide and tear apart. If we do nothing, they will win eventually.