This just in: protectionism is right-wing!

An article in this morning’s Sydney Morning Herald is sad both because of its subject matter, and the way the writer describes what’s happening.

Apparently, two left-wing racist parties are contesting the next election: Australia First (which has been commandeered by Klan members, according to the article) and the Australian Protectionists Party. Both of them are running on pretty bog standard anti-freedom platforms. Close up shop. Subsidise more local industry. It’s hard to think of why they need two separate parties considering their policies are so similar.

The problems in the article start at the second paragraph:

David Palmer, the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in Australia, said several Klan members had secretly joined Australia First, a far right party that announced yesterday that it had the numbers to register as a political party.

And continue further down the page:

Australia First and another far right party, the Australian Protectionist Party, look set to contest the next election on an anti-immigration platform. Beneath them is a miasma of other radical groups consolidating their membership and building numbers in the face of economic instability. Some members shift between groups. Other groups divide over disputes about where to direct their efforts. Some, like One Nation, collapse and are re-absorbed by remaining groups.

I applaud that the writer made at least half an attempt to make the parties seem extreme by calling them far-anything, but these people need to be labelled as what they are: authoritarian left-wing racists.

Many of these parties’ policies would fit right in on the Greens’ economic manifesto. The Australian Protectionists want to:

Save Australia from the ravages of over-population, which is causing environmental ruin, and instead create a sustainable future for our land.

Institute tariff barriers against cheap foreign imports to encourage the survival, rebuilding, and emergence of local manufacturing industries. Institute a national “buy back Australia” policy for companies, public assets, and resources.

Australia First keeps it flowing with highlights including Rebuild Australian Manufacturing Industries (we can only assume they intend to do this using the left-wing tools of tariffs and subsidies) and Control Foreign Ownership (which is essentially similar to the Protectionists’ “buy back Australia” policy).

Parties such as these follow the lead of the notorious British National Party. They feed on fear of “foreigners” and promote paranoia through statements like “If Protectionist policies are not carried out, then Australia will become a Third World country with a Third World economy, the Aussie way of life will be destroyed, and the Australian People and the Aboriginal People will disappear from the face of the earth forever“. Never mind the fact that almost every serious economist since Adam Smith has slammed protectionist polices for creating deadweight losses within economies and resulting, overall, in contraction. It would be protectionism that turns into Australia into a third world country, not our failure to enact these radical policies.

These parties are anything but right-wing. If we’re just talking about economics, they are the antithesis of right-wing ideology. They call for subsidies and tariffs and they decry the free market as being unfair. The British National Party (which is truly fascist), like Australia’s One Nation, also likes to go on about “social justice” and the supposed need to increase welfare payments.

Some in the socially conservative right might agree with these parties’ views on immigration and social policy, but that does not excuse the fact that the absolute bulk of the policies espoused by parties such as the BNP, One Nation, the Australian Protectionists, and Australia First, are left-wing, and that will not change, so it’s completely incorrect to call these parties right-wing, let alone “far-right”.