The Australian Senate almost passed a motion affirming that “it’s OK to be white”. This probably sounds innocuous enough to the casual or incurious observer — and that’s exactly what the white supremacists who devised the slogan intended.

To understand how and why the slogan came to be voted on by the Senate, you need first to engage with the malicious, trolling doublethink that characterises the worst parts of the internet.

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The idea of using “it’s OK to be white” as part of a far right political project emerged around a year ago on the message board 4chan.

Always a home for trolls, over time certain boards on 4chan and its cousin 8chan have become nerve centres for far right activism.

The notion cooked up by one of the site’s anonymous users was that a postering campaign featuring the ostensibly inoffensive slogan would “trigger” leftists and journalists, who would immediately understand its racist intent.

Then, the plan held, overreaction from these groups would appal “normies”, or normal, average Americans. They would be then be drawn towards the far right after they concluded that “leftists and journalists hate white people”.

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According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), fliers were duly distributed in at least six states last Halloween, as well as in Alberta, Canada.

But several problems immediately beset this would-be covert action.

The first is that, as the ADL points out, the slogan has been used by white supremacists for decades, and it was immediately identifiable as a racist meme.

White power bands were using it for song titles as far back as 2001, and it was appearing on white supremacist fliers as long ago as 2005.

That’s no surprise – “it’s OK to be white” perfectly expresses the sense of white victimhood that pervades white supremacist movements that see any demand for racial justice as an attack on white identity.

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The slogan neatly encapsulates the imaginary universe of “reverse racism”, wherein critiques of white supremacy and structural racism are turned inside out, and used as evidence of anti-white racism. It captures the mindset that accuses those opposed to racism of being, themselves, racist.

The second problem the memers faced was that after originating in the bowels of chan culture, the plan was immediately adopted and promoted by prominent neo-Nazis and Klansmen.

First, it was promoted by what may be the world’s most prominent neo-Nazi website, the Daily Stormer. Then, former KKK grand wizard David Duke claimed the campaign was “sweeping the nation”.

And immediately it became the basis for further action by open white nationalists.

More postering campaigns followed. People found cards with the slogan printed on them inside boxes of nappies at Target, complete with links to white supremacist websites. It was used in demonstrations featuring white nationalists, like the banner drop that happened in south west Washington, not far from Portland, last November.

By then, “it’s OK to be white” had become a calling card for the trolls, con artists and sincere racists that make up the far right.

Right wing troll and grifter Milo Yiannopoulos promoted the slogan, then put it on a T-shirt (a similar shirt was spotted on his fellow charlatan Lauren Southern when she landed in Brisbane earlier this year).

Then professional prevaricator Tucker Carlson attempted to whitewash the slogan on his show, which, during the Trump era, has become a reliable conduit for white nationalist talking points. The slogan, and the fake debate about its merits, had become mainstream.

“It’s OK to be white” followed a path that many awful ideas have taken in the Trump era — from the cesspits of the alt right internet, through an increasingly confident far right street movement, and on through the self-aggrandising provocateurs who occupy increasingly prominent positions in conservative media.



Finally it got to Pauline Hanson. Then, unbelievably, it came to a vote in the Australian Senate.

Notwithstanding the white supremacist origins of the slogan, and the sentiment of white victimhood that underpins it, that body almost passed a motion supporting it.

The fact that this happened with the support of government ministers — including the Indigenous affairs minister — is beyond disheartening.

It’s not that these Liberal and National ministers are Nazis, as far as we know. Indeed, they’re making excuses, claiming disorganisation, confusion and mistakes.

But this is still damning — Hanson has been Australia’s most prominent xenophobe for a generation. If you can’t be bothered looking hard at the proposals she is bringing to the Senate, this suggests at the very best a dangerous complacency.

But it is hard not to suspect that some on that side voted for it out of a juvenile urge to upset their opponents on the left. Some may have been effectively endorsing white supremacy to “own the libs”.

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Many people – and not just people on the right – try to minimise the danger of surging far right movements. They say that these groups are small, have no access to power, and that their ideas have limited appeal for mainstream Australians.

In a small way, the debacle in the Senate shows how wrong-headed this is. The far right lies, sows confusion, and hides its intentions in order to mainstream its messages. Careless, ignorant or actively sympathetic politicians help them.

And each time a white supremacist meme receives a public airing, the Overton window shifts a little in favour of the racist far right.

In a country which already enacts punitive and xenophobic border policies, which has not reconciled itself with its Indigenous people, and which regularly subjects prominent people of colour to prolonged public shaming, racist memes should not be treated as a joke.

The Senate is another matter.

• Jason Wilson is a Guardian writer and columnist