United Australia Party Senator and Parliament’s top shitposter Ralph Babet has been busy lately — not that much of it has had to do with representing the people of Victoria.
Between the attempted assassination of former US president Donald Trump, a Tenacious D joke, the likely replacement of 2024 Democratic nominee Joe Biden with Kamala Harris, and the Olympics’ “demonic and deranged” opening ceremony, there’s been a lot to post about.
But it doesn’t appear much of it is directed at an Australian audience.
I was unable to speak to Babet for this piece. Someone in his office told me the senator was “overseas”, promised to get back to me, and never did. It’s unclear where he is, but he has kept up his posting, sharing memes and conspiracies, mostly revolving around MAGA talking points. When I looked at his X account on Friday, his bio had been changed to mock progressive signifiers, with a cover photo of Trump following the shooting. On Tuesday, he generated outrage by posting “light skinned n*ggas for Trump”, responding to a high-profile US account. A few hours later, he shared a screenshot of his analytics, boasting of rising engagement.
None of this is new for Babet. The former real estate agent, a native French speaker who moved to Australia with his parents as a child from the island nation of Mauritius, has been posting right-wing conspiracy theories since before he entered the Senate in 2022 as the sixth senator elected in Victoria — Clive Palmer’s only return on his $100 million+ campaign spend.
As Crikey’s Cam Wilson reported at the time, Babet wiped his socials soon after election night, with archived posts claiming the election would be rigged (Babet was elected off 4% of first preferences, with Liberal and One Nation preferences pushing him over the line). But it wasn’t long before he started back up again, using his taxpayer-funded time to rail against globalists and the “woke left”, leaning into the MAGA buzzwords du jour. His Telegram is often overrun with “hate symbols, slurs and recruiting efforts by known neo-Nazis,” Wilson noted in 2023, with the senator forced to distance himself from one in February 2024. Crikey does not suggest that Babet endorses these views.
Babet attracts little attention in the mainstream media, despite claiming to have been “raising hell for the establishment” — though he does sometimes appear in conservative channels. There has nevertheless been a noticeable uptick in his posting of late, with Babet generating his first mainstream headlines in months by calling for US band Tenacious D to be deported (so much for free speech). He has also been calling for people to “Join The Movement”, presumably because the UAP has been deregistered — a move that seemingly caught the senator by surprise.
Some suspect Babet is getting outside help with his comms to boost his profile; he is clearly engagement farming, with posts intended to rile up outrage (X users have taken to screenshotting instead of sharing these). But is he someone we should be worried about? Is he importing US talking points, or simply exporting his own, trying to get on the MAGA gravy train?
Independent antifascist researcher Sam of Alternative Media Watchers observes the 41-year-old senator more closely than most. He says Babet is “deeply obsessed” with Trump and the American far right, with his uptick in conspiracy posting coinciding with the US election.
“I think he gets caught up in the American cable news cycle and goes along for the ride,” Sam told Crikey. “He sees other controversial right-wing figures on Twitter who have to continuously amplify their rhetoric to maintain an audience and tries to replicate that. We can see that this week with him beginning to replicate Andrew Tate’s use of the N word.”
Sam doesn’t think Babet has any particular goals “beyond trying to get validation from right-wing Twitter personalities and to help Trump”, noting that you can often find him posting emojis in the comments of MAGA personalities, nodding along with their controversial takes.
“I think we need to be worried about him, but not as a far-right thought leader capable of rallying a movement … He is a follower, and most definitely a shitposter, but he has a political position in the Australian Senate and can be useful to more experienced and media literate right-wing populists,” Sam said, referring to the neo-Nazi infiltration of Babet’s Telegram — something Sam has previously drawn the senator’s attention to.
It seems highly unlikely that Babet will ever be reelected, not without another mammoth Palmer spend and another lucky set of preference flows. He is currently quite powerless in the Senate, with Labor able to pass legislation with the Greens and three crossbenchers. But he does have four years left on his six-year term. Could he end up with a more potent balance of power in the next Parliament?
With the crossbench now sitting at a record-high of 20, and 10 crossbenchers with four years left, it looks vaguely possible. But it remains to be seen if Babet would know how to use that power for anything other than mid shitposting, as he heads further down the MAGA mind control wormhole, hoping “the patriarch” will finally notice him.
