Australia Day has come and gone, but the far right is still celebrating.
A campaign launched by a Proud Boy to expand the already controversial Australia Day festivities into a month-long celebration of white identity has failed to gain any mainstream momentum, but has found some support from Australian fringe and political figures.
And one of the ways that “Australia Month” is being promoted is through the use of AI-generated, surreal and ultra-nationalistic images of white people saluting in Australiana settings, complete with grotesque distortions like extra hands that are tell-tale signs of the involvement of artificial intelligence.
At the beginning of the year, Ben Shand, a member of Australian Proud Boys who goes by the online nom de plume “The Dusty Bogan”, launched a petition calling for January to be recognised as “Australia Month” by the government.
Ostensibly a normal, patriotic campaign, its Telegram channel betrays its extreme, white nationalist roots. The account for Australia Month has shared links from known far-right individuals like Daniel Walker and other explicitly neo-Nazi accounts. Shand has left no doubt as to the racial motive behind the celebrations, comparing it to a US-based conservative radio host’s proposal for a “white history month”.
While the petition has only captured just over a thousand signatures in a month — for comparison, a petition calling for the saving of a local bakery on the outskirts of Sydney launched after the Australia Month campaign has more than 4,400 signees — the idea has caught on with some social media users and fringe Australian figures.
The #AustraliaMonth hashtag has trended on X, formerly Twitter, at various times throughout January. Dozens of users have posted using the hashtag, seemingly unaware of the campaign’s radical origins. One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts seemingly tweeted in support of the campaign at 1.06am on January 1. Organiser of the Church and State conference Dave Pellowe partnered with the campaign to offer discounted rates for the event.
One avid promoter has been Aldyn Hayes, a transphobic, Trump-loving former One Nation volunteer who has enthusiastically flooded social media with AI-generated images to promote the event. These posts predominantly feature white men performing an American salute to the Australian flag at barbeque events, often with obvious errors like floating limbs and hands protruding out of chests.
Despite being obvious nationalistic fan art, these images have spread beyond the Australia Month campaign. In one example, a rural service station sharing the image has racked up more than 33,000 engagements and 8,600 shares for the image.
But with time running out for the government or even One Nation to officially endorse the celebration, Australia Month looks set to remain just an AI-generated figment of the far right’s imagination.
