Ultranationalists Are Seeing an Organizing Boom in Australia
At a recent anti-vaccine rally in Melbourne, observers identified supporters of the Ustaše, a Croatian fascist movement with Nazi-collaborationist roots. It’s no fluke: the radical right is attaching itself to the anti-vaccine movement everywhere.
A large crowd of protesters marched from Parliament House to Flagstaff Gardens in Melbourne, Australia, to protest against vaccination mandates. (Darrian Traynor / Getty Images)
The far right was out in force at September’s anti-vaccination rally outside the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Manufacturing and Energy Union (CFMMEU) office in Melbourne. Alongside garden-variety conspiracy theorists and fascists, however, a few rarer specimens made an appearance.
After deriding mandatory vaccinations in the construction industry, one of the speakers drew an analogy between the assembled protesters and “those boys who fought against communism” in Croatia during the Second World War. It was a thinly veiled reference to the fascist Ustaša movement, adding weight to reports that a small number of Ustaša sympathizers have infiltrated the CFMMEU.
But who exactly are the Ustaše? What influence do they hold in Australian society, and to what extent does their presence reflect a broader trend?
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