Extremist movements in Australia?

By Dewi Anggraeni

MELBOURNE (JP): Australians, while opposed to France's nuclear testings in the Pacific, were appalled at the bombings of the office of the French honorary consul in Perth last month. Most Australians will go as far as organizing peaceful demonstrations to protest certain issues. When these become out of control and violence is used, most will dissociate themselves with those "elements" of the demonstrations. In other words, Australians regard themselves as fair, slow to anger, and not easily dragged into extreme causes.

There is a tendency in all of us, when faced with something we don't like, to pretend it is not there until it jumps up and gives us a start. One phenomenon which Australians tend not to take seriously is social extremism. Extremists stand out in Australia because of their total conviction that only they are on the right path to righteousness while those who disagree with them are on the slippery slide to destruction. This attitude sits uncomfortably in the generally skeptical yet tolerant ambience of Australian society.

Australian society and authorities have even tolerated groups promoting ideas that border on incitement to violence, though they do bring on public debate from time to time. However, when members of a suspected extremist group were found in its defense department, Australia was entitled to be concerned, and it is, to a certain extent.

On May 3, a Defense Department employee, Darren Couchman, was found guilty by a Canberra Magistrate Court for possessing illegal weapons, and was fined A$2,500. It did not seem a remarkable event in itself, except that the weapons cache was linked to the activities of a fundamentalist group calling itself The Loyal Regiment of Australian Guardians. The LROAG is known to believe, among other things, that the United Nations is corrupt, Australia's democratic form of government is illegitimate, taxation should be abolished, Indonesia is preparing for an invasion and Japan is going to colonize Australia.

All of the above have been expressed separately, or even wholly, by many Australians in private. The difference is, they do not have guns, or if they do, they are not likely to use them in connection to the above beliefs. The LROAG is said to have run military-style weapons training camps in northern New South Wales and advocates taking up arms against the "new world order". Many people would agree that firearms in an organized group whose members firmly believe they are threatened and therefore should defend themselves, spells disaster.

A particularly sobering aspect of the LROAG is that three of its members had been working in the computer section of the Australian Defense Department, before their security clearances were canceled.

The LROAG is not the first or the only such group found in Australia. Some seven years ago, a vicious extremist group called the Australian Nationalist Movement went around Perth spreading hatred against Asians, Aborigines, Jews and any other minority group, armed with firebombs and other weapons. Several neo-Nazi groups still exist throughout Australia, and while they do not do anything illegal, the authorities and the general population leave them well alone.

Equivalent to the LROAG is the AUSI Freedom Scouts, which advertises in a magazine called Lock Stock & Barrel calling for recruits to help an overstretched defense force fight off the coming invasion from the north.

A very common response in Australia to these groups is to ignore or tolerate them, typified by an Australian National University political scientist Michael Mckinley's comment, "They're sad buggers". McKinley does not think they present a real threat.

One disturbing fact is, many of the convictions held religiously by groups like the LROAG and the AUSI Freedom Scouts are shared, albeit superficially, by many Australians, if not all the time, some of the time. I have often heard at dinner parties, or overheard at public functions, people complaining about the ineffectiveness of the United Nations, that the government has far too much power, or that Australia is being progressively colonized by the Japanese, in the economic sense. And some aggrieved party can be heard wanting to overhaul the taxation system. Recently on the ABC's Australia Talkback program several callers voiced opinions very similar to ideas propagated by the LROAG and the AUSI Freedom Scouts, stopping short at taking up arms themselves.

One consolation is the knowledge that Australians are generally too skeptical and apathetic to organize themselves into real militant groups in order to fight enemies about whom they are not very sure. Hence, it is highly unlikely that groups like Branch Davidian sect or Michigan Militia organization would gain strength in this country. But impossible it is not.