Far-right extremists are savvy political actors. They know that openly discussing their beliefs risks running afoul of anti-discrimination laws. Because of this, they have mastered how to speak in the negative and convey meaning through allusion.
Now the furore of misinformation (in Australia, at least) has died down, it's important to look back to understand how neo-Nazi views infiltrated mainstream media and why the television watchdog ruled that Sky News did not break industry standards by airing an interview with noted neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell, leader of the United Patriots Front, which is widely regarded as a white nationalist hate-group.
This decision was eminently predictable despite the intense public outcry at the time. The watchdog report declares that Cottrell did not incite hatred of minorities in part because he did not mention them by name. However, the Sky News interview is a case study of how extremists renegotiate their ideas for mainstream consumption. Much of the discussion was devoted to exploring a central tenet of white supremacy: 'white genocide'.
White genocide is a conspiracy theory which asserts that the white race is in terminal decline due to immigration, inter-cultural mixing and land redistribution. Experts credit infamous neo-Nazi David Lane with developing the idea. Cottrell avoided such blunt terms, instead using 'white farmers' to discuss the same ideas.
The South African government is exploring land reform as a means of socio-economic redress. In 1913, the white-only government reserved nearly all arable farmland for the white minority, and the post-apartheid government has only restored a small fraction of this land.
In the interview, Cottrell argued that we should stop immigration entirely except for white South African farmers. 'White farmers are not going to ransack homes or attack police,' he said, 'they won't chop people up with machetes in the street'. Buried beneath hyperbole was the implication that black people might do such things. This is a common tactic: the audience understands the insinuation but, if questioned, the speaker can fall back on the defence that they did not actually say it.
Nevertheless, he went so far as to accuse South African politicians of 'drawing up the means' to kill white farmers and steal their property, conjuring an image of a white minority in immediate danger. The white farmers narrative is the concept of white genocide rebranded for an Australian audience.
"We can hardly be surprised that Sky News greenlit an interview with a neo-Nazi when government officials forwarded the same ideas."
We