This week we heard Liberal leader Sussan Ley demanding Anthony Albanese show “leadership” to repair social cohesion. Leadership, in the Coalition’s opinion, is conflating peaceful anti-genocide protests and marches with what we saw last weekend, where neo-Nazis were platformed on the national stage.

That is not showing “leadership”. But it is in the tradition of the Coalition, which has spent the past decade refusing to acknowledge the growing threat of the far-right in Australia – right down to then home affairs minister Peter Dutton declaring “you can use left-wing to describe everybody from the left to the right” in response to a 2020 speech from ASIO director-general Mike Burgess warning right-wing extremism was on the rise. Burgess didn’t reference left-wing extremism, but Dutton still took aim at “left-wing lunatics”.

That same year, reporting partly based on the ASIO threat assessment briefing indicated right-wing extremists represented a third of all ASIO domestic investigations, with security agencies sounding the alarm that the Covid response was being used to recruit new members to far-right causes.

But Scott Morrison, Dutton and co were reticent to ever call out far-right extremism and would only ever focus on the “left”, with Dutton also claiming, without evidence, that Islamic terrorism was left-wing. When challenged, Dutton said he didn’t want to get into a “semantic and nonsense debate”.

This, of course, was after an Australian far-right terrorist murdered 51 Muslim worshippers at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand.  Morrison, then prime minister, cautioned against the “tribalism” he saw emerging in society, but there was no outright condemnation of far-right terrorism.

It wasn’t until 2021 that Dutton announced he planned on adding a British-based far-right group to Australia’s terrorist list, the first time a far-right listing had been made. Later that year, then-home affairs minister Karen Andrews managed to list a larger neo-Nazi group with international links, but only by listing the entirety of Hezbollah at the same time.

The Coalition’s response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza has been to criticise protests and marches calling for government action, sanctions on Israel and liberation of an occupied people as “antisemitic” but it has not applied the same standard to neo-Nazis being platformed at anti-immigration rallies.

Michaelia Cash led the Coalition’s stunt in the Senate this week, where it attempted to amend a Greens motion condemning the weekend marches to include a condemnation of those marching for Palestine. This may seem like the usual political games, but for those who do not pay attention to the news, or politics, it creates the illusion that “these two things are the same”.

Because the Coalition has never been able to call out far-right terrorism for its clear and present danger. Not without conflating it with causes the left is protesting for.

This wouldn’t be as bad if Labor pushed back in defence of democratic protests and peaceful assemblies, and showed the necessary moral clarity and courage in addressing the far-right.

But it doesn’t. Not for the same reasons as the Coalition, which is concerned with keeping some of the people who flirt with far-right causes in its own tent, as well as pandering to its own political base and a media eco-system that hold sympathies with some of the vile revisionism these groups promote.

No, it’s because while Labor knows the left will not respond with anarchy and violence to crackdowns and criticism, the right will.

So it is easier to use Palestinian or climate protests as an excuse to restrict the right to protest and gather to express democratic discontent, and engage in the hubris of the “perilous” nature of peaceful assembly against war crimes or the destruction of the planet, than it is to call out the far right. Which did descend into violence. Which does threaten our way of life. Which actively wants dominion over minorities and to install a violent white supremacist hierarchy. Conflating that with calls to end the mass slaughter of civilians is not only irresponsible, it’s dangerous.

Yet here we are. Trapped between those who would flirt with those ideologies for political gain and those unwilling to make the stand the moment demands. Even Ley’s admonishment of Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price over her false claims about Labor allowing migration from nations that could benefit it electorally – singling out Indian migrants, a community already threatened by those responsible for last weekend’s marches – didn’t come from a place of moral courage, but because it hurts the Coalition electorally.

In the 1990s, the Howard government used the exact same argument to change the migration system from one centred around family visas to one based on temporary migration, having accused the Keating-Hawke government of wanting to shore up its vote through migrants.

Despite being abhorrent politics, it’s never been true. A 2020 report by The Australian Population Research Institute found “voters born overseas are slightly more inclined to prefer the Coalition to Labor. This preference is particularly marked for those born in Asian countries.”

Historically, it has been Coalition governments that have supported bigger migration, which a 2008 analysis of Australia’s migration from federation onwards made clear. It found there was such a “remarkably consistent record” that “one can confidently say 1. Immigration will always be higher under a Liberal government, and: 2. Tariffs will always be lower under a Labor government”.

That conclusion was made by a then-fellow at the IPA. Not exactly known for being “lefties”.

Again, you don’t have to go far to see the demonisation of “others” in the Coalition’s history. Dutton and Morrison both claimed that allowing asylum seekers to be treated in Australian hospitals was taking beds from Australians. As recent as the last election, Coalition MPs, including the now-leading Liberal moderate Jane Hume, alluded that any Chinese-Australian canvassing for Labor MPs was under the direction of the CCP.

These dog whistles are built into our political systems, and used to eke out any possible electoral advantage. It’s only when things inevitably go too far that there is any examination, but that never seems to last longer than the day’s news cycle.

That goes for the media too, which largely reports on these events as if they are isolated incidents, not related to any history recent or otherwise.

This is not the time for politics as usual. Human beings should never be used for political gain. That we have once again reduced people not born in Australia to their ability to fill labour gaps, or their food, as if they don’t have personhood beyond that, is part of the reason that we once again find ourselves here.

But the response is not to conflate legitimate protest with fascism. Or to conclude that we need to have the population plan discussion because fascists have hit a raw nerve. You cannot both sides the rise of fascism. You cannot be objective about it, or concede that maybe the fascists have a point.

We know where that path leads. Without some responsibility and moral clarity from our leaders, we’ll be doomed to sleepwalking down it, once again.