It was entirely predictable that Pauline Hanson's One Nation would try to jump on the "anti-globalisation" bandwagon. After all, that's what right-wing populists do — jump on bandwagons — and there's no issue more popular at present than hatred of "economic rationalism" and the giant corporations which have grown fat from it.
It was also entirely predictable that the big-business media would promote Hanson as the "anti-globaliser". After all, that's what they do — run smear campaigns, all the better to tar the global anti-corporate movement with the same brush.
Sydney Morning Herald columnist Imre Salusinszky, obviously jockeying to take over Padraic McGuinness's throne as the SMH's resident right-wing ranter, excelled himself on February 19, writing "Well, apart from the Hanson personality cult, and a few dubious policies concerning minorities, [One Nation] is all just part of what the S11 web site calls 'the anti-neo-liberal movement'.
"Not a pretty picture, but then I have predicted for years that One Nation and the hard Left would eventually flow down into the same delta of illiberalism."
He even referred to the "anti-market blather of One Nation and the Green Left".
But, outside of the feverish goings-on in Salusinszky-world, what does One Nation and the growing anti-corporate protest movement have in common? Nothing, zilch, bugger all. The two sides are implacable foes, and will always remain so.
What's common is little more than a word — "globalisation" — a glib catch-all if ever there was one.
But the radical left and the redneck right mean entirely different things by "globalisation": we mean "global capitalism", which is multiplying poverty, inequality and ecocide in every corner of the world; they mean "the rest of the world", a yellow peril threat to "traditional Australian values".
Chalk up the diametrical opposites: the protest movement is internationalist, One Nation is nationalist and racist; the protest movement calls for freedom of movement for people across borders, Hanson's lot call for the deportation of refugees and zero net immigration; the radical left wants an expansion of aid to poor countries, most importantly through the cancellation of Third World debt, the far-right wants to "take care of Australia first"; we say no to World Trade Organisation agreements which entrench the rights of corporations against working people, they say no to United Nations human rights conventions.
The "proofs" of commonality disappear as soon as you look at them.
Protectionism and tariff walls? One Nation certainly backs such a policy, and so too do some of the more right-wing sections of the trade union movement, to their shame. But the anti-corporate movement opposes First World protectionism, because it's used by big business to crush poor country industries and enforce dependency; the overwhelming sentiment at the S11 protests in Melbourne against protectionism and for genuine international cooperation is proof of that.
Anti-business? Apart from the odd, empty bit of bank-bashing (a staple of right-wing demagogues going all the way back to Adolph Hitler), One Nation seems to reserve its bluster for only a particular brand of company: "foreign multinationals", as opposed to Australian-owned ones. The anti-corporate movement, on the other hand, has directed some of its most concerted fire at dinky-di Aussie firms, like BHP, North Limited and the Commonwealth Bank; the main enemy is at home, in our view.
Deregulation? One Nation has come out against the disastrous deregulation of the dairy industry, but so too has everyone who isn't receiving a cheque from the perpetrators of that disaster.
All Hanson calls for, however, is a return to the pre-deregulation days, a time when the big dairy companies and the banks were still screwing small farmers, only not so much. Real (that is, socialist) solutions to dairy farmers' plight, such as the nationalisation of the banking industry and the big milk-processing companies, provision of cheap or interest-free government loans to small dairy farmers — none of these proposals are to be found in One Nation's platform.
Of course, the redneck right and the radical left are competing for support amongst all those, the vast majority of society, who've been done over and done in by the pro-corporate "economic rationalist" policies of Labor and the Coalition.
But Hanson's trolls want to take people back to a hick, parochial, shut-off, closed-minded, backward-looking, xenophobic, lily-white Australia, the Aussie cockroach capitalist's idea of heaven — and damn the rest of the world.