On Sunday 31 August 2025 thousands of Australians rallied under the March for Australia banner to demand cuts to immigration. The visuals were impossible to ignore. Counter-protests. Police lines. In several cities known neo-Nazis marched or spoke. Reporters captured black-clad extremists in Perth and Melbourne, while ABC Verify documented how the march website had referenced the white nationalist idea of “remigration”. Organisers denied extremist ties, yet the optics and the evidence told a harder story.
A second wave is building. For Friday 13 September plans are in for an “anti-corruption” procession across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, fronted by a new coalition styling itself Australia Unites Against Government Corruption, with participation from familiar pandemic-era networks like My Place and allied sovereign-citizen and anti-vax figures. Police have confirmed a formal application and warned about operational strain if it proceeds.
Names that surfaced during the COVID years are back. My Place, led by Darren Bergwerf, has spent years cultivating local “council” influence strategies and sovereign-citizen talking points. MMAMV, the Millions March Against Mandatory Vaccination network, seeded rallies early in the pandemic that blurred into broader “freedom” politics. The same channels now cross-promote anti-immigration actions, anti-mandate grievances and anti-state rhetoric that corrodes trust in elections and institutions.
None of this is uniquely Australian. The pattern is global and it comes with a simple through-line. Destabilise confidence in democratic processes and centrist governance, then harvest the policy spoils. The obvious cultural winners are far-right actors. The material winners are fossil fuel and weapons investors.
The international playbook
In the United States the Stop the Steal ecosystem fused hyper-partisan media, militia movements and street-fighting crews into a single narrative that the system had been stolen. Multiple Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders were later convicted of seditious conspiracy over the January 6 attack. The legal outcomes matter because they show how a soft narrative of “taking our country back” can harden into organised violence once a coalition forms around it.
Brazil followed the same groove. Bolsonaro supporters stormed Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential palace on 8 January 2023, claiming a stolen election. The courts are now trying Bolsonaro and senior allies over an alleged coup plan, with proceedings entering a decisive phase in early September 2025. Analysts have described the disinformation cycle as transnational and self-reinforcing, which is exactly how these ecosystems sustain themselves.
Across Europe far-right narratives have mainstreamed around migration, with new vigilante theatrics and a steady drumbeat of misinformation that shifts public debate toward securitisation. The EU’s own research arm flags the disinformation problem as acute. Human Rights Watch calls out how even centrists ape far-right frames once the narrative moves. Australia’s recent marches echoed the same slogans and symbols.
The local data points
What we saw on 31 August was not a one-off. ABC’s live coverage, SBS’s incident reports and regional outlets all tallied significant crowds and multiple flashpoints. One man was arrested in Brisbane after clashes. The West Australian photographed open Nazi salutes in Perth. ABC Verify tied some organisers to white supremacist content and documented the “remigration” language on the march site before it was amended.
Now zoom in on the 13 September bridge event. Reporting links the application to Australia Unites Against Government Corruption with support from groups that authorities and researchers classify as sovereign-citizen adjacent or conspiracy-led. Police are preparing for significant operational impact. This sits in a broader spike in sovereign-citizen visibility since the Porepunkah police killings, which has pushed the movement into mainstream news.
Advance, the conservative campaigning organisation formerly known as Advance Australia, has not claimed ownership of the marches, yet it has been running a hard “stop mass immigration” campaign of its own and has built a large activist network that overlaps online with the same audience. Advance’s role in high-spend political messaging is well documented, including millions on the Voice referendum and federal campaigning. This context matters because it shows how professionalised messaging can amplify and legitimise street movements even without formal links.
Cui bono: the weapons industry
There is a well trodden path from democratic stress to defence outlays and investor gains. Australia’s defence budget is already set at about $51.5 billion in 2025–26, with a planned rise toward 2.33 percent of GDP by 2034. Major slices are earmarked for AUKUS submarines, new surface ships and long-range strike. Payments to overseas primes are substantial and growing.
AUKUS itself carries a forecast total cost between $268 billion and $368 billion over 30 years, with scheduled payments already flowing. Even critics who doubt the deliverability of US-built subs accept that massive capital will move through allied defence supply chains for decades. That capital lands in backlogs and dividend streams for global primes.
Look at the numbers. RTX, parent of Raytheon, reported 2024 sales of about $81 billion and a record backlog around $218 billion, including roughly $93 billion on the defence side, with guidance for continued growth in 2025. Lockheed Martin’s 2024 backlog came in near $176 billion. These are not abstract figures. They are pipeline value that turns into cash when governments keep ordering missiles, aircraft and sensors. Global stress is a revenue line.
The money power does not end at sales. US defence-sector lobbying ran to roughly $150 million in 2024, part of a long history of political spend to protect budgets, shape export rules and steer industrial policy. Australia’s own Future Fund holds hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons manufacturer shares. When political noise pushes governments toward higher defence outlays and emergency procurement, shareholders bank the upside.
Fossil fuel money loves a distracted democracy
The other obvious beneficiary is the fossil fuel sector, especially where oligarchic fortunes are tied to coal and gas. InfluenceMap continues to track aggressive lobbying to slow or dilute climate policy, including in Australia’s capacity market design and electricity plans. Donations data is messy and delayed, yet multiple analyses show fossil fuel interests showering both major parties with money, while dark-money gaps hide the rest. The intent is access and agenda-setting.
Australia has lived through an example of billionaire political intervention at scale. Clive Palmer’s mining-funded United Australia Party set spending records in 2019 and 2022 as it promoted anti-mandate themes and attacked climate and Labor policies. Palmer boasted that the spend kept Labor out in 2019. Whether you view that as satire or strategy, it shows how extractive-industry wealth can bend national debate.
How the pieces fit together
Street movements like My Place and MMAMV are skilled at merging causes. Mandates and sovereign-citizen pseudo-law in 2021. Anti-immigration sentiment in 2025. Anti-corruption branding that points not to the NACC or ICAC processes but to a wholesale rejection of public institutions. Once such distrust reaches critical mass the governing centre is forced into crisis footing. That footing often means tougher policing, bigger defence appropriations and a political climate that deprioritises labour protections and climate action in the name of security and social order. Precisely the policy mix that rewards weapons manufacturers and fossil fuel capital. n
The “remigration” language that surfaced around March for Australia connects Australian street politics to a wider far-right lexicon in Europe. That lexicon reliably moves voters toward punitive migration stances and away from economic reform or decarbonisation, which again serves incumbent carbon assets. Meanwhile, as seen in the US and Brazil, once a coalition has learned to mobilise online, it can flip from rallying to intimidation without much friction.
What to watch in September
First, whether the 13 September bridge action proceeds and who shows up. Police are on notice. The presence of known extremists, overt symbols or the blending of anti-immigration slogans into an anti-corruption frame would signal further normalisation of a coalition that thrives on institutional delegitimisation.
Second, how professional campaign outfits position around these crowds. Advance has made migration a core message and has the digital reach to launder street energy into mainstream talking points and candidate pressure. That does not make Advance the organiser of the marches. It does mean narrative synchrony helps scale the effect.
Third, the budget cycle. The more Canberra locks in multi-decade defence flows, the more the weapons sector and its investors bank predictable returns. RTX’s guidance and Lockheed’s backlog already reflect a world where democratic anxiety reliably translates into orders.
The bottom line
It is not necessary to prove a formal conspiracy between street groups and billionaires to see how incentives line up. A polity kept in permanent outrage is easier to steer toward budgets and laws that favour concentrated wealth. Australian democracy is resilient, yet the last month showed how quickly imported slogans and local grievances can combine into spectacles that shift the centre of gravity. If we normalise that drift the beneficiaries will not be the people waving Australian flags or wearing hi-vis on the steps of Parliament. They will be the investors whose portfolios rise with every new missile line and every new gas basin approval.
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