DAVID GREASON is the author of I was a Teenage Fascist. He was interviewed for Green Left Weekly by SEAN LENNON.
You mention in your book that you got involved in far-right politics at age 14. What led you to this?
There are two parts to that question. I was, at the time, vaguely sympathetic to mainstream right-wing politics; that was just at the end of the Whitlam government. I used to read the newspapers a lot, and in that period there was a hell of a lot of anti-Whitlam sentiment about.
My parents were Labor voters, but they were complaining Labor voters, and they would complain quite a lot — as a lot of people do — not necessarily from a formulated left perspective, more like "the government isn't doing us any good".
But probably more important than that for me was that I desperately wanted to belong to something and get involved in an adult world.
I checked out lots of groups, including the old Socialist Workers Party, and I'd have to be honest and say that I could have gone any number of ways. I could have joined the SWP except that I wasn't as intellectually focused as I might have liked. I was 14 at that point, and you'd have to do a bit of thinking and read books; it wasn't just something for a bit of excitement, whereas when I came across the groups of the far right for the first time, you didn't have to think to be involved with them.
I think what I wanted was someone to pat me on the head and say what an incredibly bright boy you are. There were lots of young people in the SWP, whereas in a group like the League of Rights most of the members were much older, and a 14-year-old who had a chatty mouth could maybe impress them more.
Why did you leave National Action?
There have been a number of developments in postwar fascism. In the '50s and '60s you had out-and-out Nazi groups, and in Australia up to the early '70s.
In Britain and the US you saw the rise of groups like the National Front, which were unambiguously fascist organisations with a clear Nazi heritage, but they presented themselves as patriotic groups. As well, they distanced themselves from the swastikas and the Hitler worship. That only happened in Australia around the mid-'70s. Up to 1975, the major fascist organisations in Australia were out-and-out Nazis.
The groups I was involved with from 1976 onwards presented themselves as patriotic organisations and not Nazi, although they were, and so there was this incredible tension within the group. I suppose I was considered on the "left" of the fascist movement in Australia because I wanted to clean up and dump the Nazism.
In a certain sense, that was genuine because I wasn't a great admirer of Hitler, nor were a number of other people in these groups. We said, "If we want to talk about racism in Australia, you can turn to people like Jack Lang, Henry Lawson or William Spence or a whole host of people in the labour tradition. You didn't have to go for a discredited German politician of the 1930s."
As I got older, I found the reality of fascist politics is that you were reviled. I was in a workplace where the unionists would not talk to me. Friendship does count for a lot. It's important if we do have a fascist in the workplace to make it clear to them that you will have nothing to do with them; it does undermine them.
So there were those things, but also I realised that the politics of it was destructive, that racism benefits no-one. In the book there is a bit about riding in a cab with a Vietnamese taxi driver and him telling me about his life and me just on a very humanistic level thinking it's terrible to think we can treat people like that.
Why did you write the book?
I wrote the book so that people would understand the nature of these organisations. They say they're not Nazi or racist but people can point to the book and say, "This guy says they are, and he gives a reasonable explanation as to why they are".
It's a funny thing about Australia that, outside the left, there isn't much study of far-right groups. It's important to take away the mystique of groups like National Action.
They would love people to think that they're this incredibly fierce force, and sure if they beat the shit out of you in the street they are, but not when they're getting eggs thrown at them. It's important to demystify them, which is what I've tried to do. I'm not trying to make them appear any less threatening than they are, but I'm certainly trying to squash this idea that they are about to take power.
Do you think a mass fascist movement is likely in Australia, and where would it come from if it arose?
The history of the sorts of far-right groups that I was involved with is that such groups fall apart very quickly, particularly groups like the National Front or National Action. Everything depends on the broader social conditions.
There are disconcerting things like the rise of country-based groups that are drilling along paramilitary lines and are anti-everyone. Some of their magazines are available in newsagents, and they're quite mad. I tend to think that the secret army aspect of fascism is a more likely threat than these tiny Nazi groups getting off the ground.
At this stage certainly I don't see anything on the horizon, but there are certain groups, like Australians Against Further Immigration, which I don't believe is a fascist organisation, but which have links with groups I would consider fascist. If they can tap into discontent about multiculturalism, they would be a development that we would need to focus on.
What role do you see the left playing in any anti-fascist movement?
It's vitally important for the left to be involved because, apart from the Jewish community, the left is the only group active in anti-fascist politics. The Jewish community focuses more on intelligence and monitoring. The left are the only ones to confront the fascists on the streets. If the left wasn't there, who would be?
The two things that are needed are, firstly, no sectarianism, not only amongst the left but also moving out into gay groups and women's groups. When we talk about fascism, people automatically think of attacks on people of other races, but it's anti-racist activists or gays who are often the brunt of violence by these groups. That doesn't mean that Asians don't get attacked; they do. But the brunt of fascist attacks is borne by anti-Nazis.
When Nazis operate in a particular community, like Brunswick, it is important to get the rest of that community active against them. People don't like Nazis. The Brunswick thing [an anti-Nazi demonstration in March] was brilliant. I noticed some correspondence in Green Left criticising the egg throwers, but National Action haven't come back since, nor will they.
You mentioned recently that you had some misgivings about the proposed Racial Vilification Act. Could you explain why?
Although I haven't seen the proposed legislation, I have been told by someone who has that it has holes big enough to drive a truck through. I can see problems getting prosecutions on some grounds of it. I am unambiguously in favour of enshrining in legislation the community's total opposition to any sort of literature that incites racial violence.
However, there are a lot of subtle levels of racial hatred. Would literature arguing that black people are intellectually inferior to whites or books arguing that the Holocaust is a Jewish hoax be subject to that legislation? Once that gets into court, how do you prove your case?
My other problem with the legislation is that there is a sense that you are taking what are essentially political issues out of the hands of people and into the hands of lawyers.
I'm not philosophically opposed to legislation on this issue, but I would want to see that it works and have some indication that people pushing the legislation are aware of issues like violence against anti-racists and violence against others.