One Nation’s Adviser On Muslim Issues Thinks Diversity Makes Us “Corrupt”
He's accused Tony Abbott of contributing to a "cultural genocide" in Australia.
One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts has attracted a lot of attention for his comments on The Project last night. In a segment where he attempted to defend his party’s policy calling for a ban on Muslim migration, Roberts accused Waleed Aly of “condoning terrorism”. But he let something else slip, that has so far gone unreported.
One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts Accused Waleed Aly Of Condoning Terrorism On ‘The Project’
When Roberts was asked to explain Pauline Hanson’s use of the term “swamped” to describe Muslim migration, he replied, “We’ve got an adviser who goes into all of that called Frank Salter”. Okay, firstly it’s pretty poor that a senator can’t even defend his party’s use of inflammatory language to denigrate Muslims. But who is Frank Salter, the apparent brains behind One Nation’s policies on immigration and Muslims?
It turns out he’s an Australian academic with some pretty wild views on multiculturalism, genetics and the threat that cultural diversity apparently poses to countries like Australia. On one hand, that doesn’t seem too surprising, right? One Nation are notorious for being anti-immigration, so it makes sense their policy adviser is also anti-immigration, doesn’t it? The thing is, Salter’s views go way beyond anything even Pauline Hanson has said so far.
One Nation’s policy to ban Muslim migration is now, according to one poll, supported by nearly half the population. With another six years in the Senate, how much further to the right could Hanson drag Australia’s debate on immigration? If Frank Salter is advising the party on its policies, there’s a strong chance Australian politics is about get even more vicious.
“The Cultural Genocide Of Anglo Australia”
In a 2015 article called ‘Australian Conservatism After Abbott: The Need For Social Movements’, Salter accuses Tony Abbott of being complicit in the “cultural genocide of Anglo Australia”. According to Salter, higher immigration rates under both the Howard and Abbott governments “helped reduce Australia’s Anglo and Western character” and introduced “many ills of ‘diversity'”. He also accuses the Labor party of fostering “ethnic resentment” to defeat John Howard in 2007.
Salter also argued that multiculturalism was inherently flawed according to “modern biosocial science.” In fact, a lot of Salter’s writing seems to draw on this idea that racism is something ingrained into our genetics. He thinks there’s scientific proof that that we’re biologically built to be distrustful of over ethnic groups, and that diversity leads to more “corrupt” societies.
Racism Is Biological, Apparently
Salter has written a lot on the apparent links between biology, genetics and race, including a book on the topic called On Genetic Interests: Family, Ethnicity, and Humanity in an Age of Mass Migration. It’s quite a read.
In it, he writes: “multiculturalism has a depressing effect on public altruism in most societies”. He also describes the apartheid regime in South Africa as an “aggressive social control” used to maintain the “fitness” of society.
White supremacists are happy to claim Salter as one of their own.
According to Salter, discrimination against ethnic minorities is an “inborn response” all humans have. The goal of multiculturalism, he says, is to use “ritual indoctrination” to overcome those inborn responses. The book tries to build the case that monocultural societies are inherently “fitter” than multicultural ones, and that ethnic diversity leads to corruption, weak public services and a decline in democracy.
Salter uses pseudo-scientific language, but his main point is pretty clear: tolerance of ethnic diversity will weaken society and lead to social disorder. He’s also written on the benefits of eugenics, a philosophy used by the Nazis in their attempt to create an Aryan ‘master race’. In an article for the Australian conservative magazine Quadrant, Salter writes that eugenics could lead to a “general rise in cognitive ability” and a society that trended “towards relative egalitarianism and democracy.”
Why This Is A Problem
Salter’s writing is taken pretty seriously by conservatives in Australia. He’s been published numerous times by Quadrant and sympathetic reviewers of his work have described it as “brilliant analyses of the plight of White majorities”. Jim Saleam, the leader of the far-right Australia First Party has described Salter has an “old friend” and an “innovator” of the nationalist movement. Though Saleam also recently criticised Salter for not being accepting enough in terms of who counts as a “real Australian”.
That’s right — the key thinker behind One Nation’s immigration policies is too extremist for even the Australia First Party. Salter’s work has also been positively reviewed on white nationalist forums and websites.
Everyone knows that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party has anti-migrant policies. It’s their bread and butter. But if Frank Salter really is the brains behind the party’s approach to Muslims and immigration, we’re talking about a whole different level of extremism. The core of his ideology is that racism is genetically ingrained in human DNA, and any kind of diversity is a threat to society. It’s certainly a step further than Hanson’s current line that Muslims are a problem because their “culture and ideology” is “incompatible” with Australia.
The fact that an elected representative of One Nation declined to answer a question on one of their policies, and deferred to Salter, shows he clearly has a decent amount of influence on the party’s policies. We’ve approached One Nation for clarification on the exact role Salter plays in the party and with policy development, but haven’t yet heard back.